PRACTICAL 
CITIZENSHIP 


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PRACTICAL 
CITIZENSHIP 


BY 

REV.  ADOLPH  ROEDER 


NEW  YORK: 
ISAAC  H.  BLANCHARD  CO, 

1908 


COPYRIGHT,    1908, 
BY 

ISAAC  H.  BLANCHARD  CO. 


All  right*  reserved 


Published  May.  190H 


Reprinted  June  5.  1008 


CONTENTS 
PART  I— THE  MACHINE 

PAGE 

CHAPTER  I — Historic  Background  of  the  Fundamental  Princi- 
ple of  the  Federal  Constitution 9 

CHAPTER  II — Monism  and  Dualism  in  Government ^ 18 

CHAPTER  III— The  Trinal  Division  of  Government  Machinery 
—the  Legislative,  the  Judicial  and  the  Executive 27 

CHAPTER  IV — The  Legislative  Function  of  Government — Its 
Various  Forms  and  its  Strong  and  Weak  Points 34 

CHAPTER  V— The  United  States  Senate  and  Why  Corporate 
Interests  Appeal  Most  Naturally  to  This  Body 43 

CHAPTER  VI — The   House  of   Representatives   Considered   in 
'    Connection  with  State  Rights  and  State  Interests 51 

CHAPTER  VII— The  Senate  of  New  Jersey  and  Questions  that 
Properly  Come  Before  It 60 

CHAPTER  VIII— The  Senate  of  New  Jersey  and  the  Questions 
of  Immigration  and  Potable  Water  Supply 75 

CHAPTER  IX— The    House   of   Assembly,    Its    Functions,    Its 
Limitations  and  Its  Achievements 86 

CHAPTER  X — The  Machinery  of  Government  as  Illustrated  by 
the  County  in  its  Board  of  Chosen  Freeholders 92 

PART  II— THE  FORCE 

CHAPTER  XI— The  Forces  That  Run  the  Mechanism  of  Gov- 
ernment and  Their  Dual  Manifestation 101 

CHAPTER  XII— Radicalism  as  a  Dynamic  Force  in  Citizenship 

—The  Element  of  Natural  Sequence  in  Reforms 109 


305236 


4  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER  XIII — Conservatism   the  "Opposite   and   Alternate" 

Force  to  Radicalism— How  it  is  Allied  With  Morality. ...  120 

CHAPTER  XIV — Conservatism  as  the  Centre  of  a  Wheel  and 
Radicalism  as  the  Circumference — Nobility  of  Manhood . .  130 

CHAPTER  XV— Egotism,  the  Pivotal  Dead  Centre  of  Moral  In- 
ertia, now  Giving  Way  to  Altruism 137 

CHAPTER  XVI— The  Giant  Ego  of  Commercialism,  Otherwise 

Known  as  the  Trust,  in  its  Three  Forms 147 

CHAPTER  XVII — Race  Dynamics  and  a  Survey  of  the  Human 
Force  Back  of  the  Evolution  of  Society 158 


PART  III— ACTION  AND  PRACTICE 

CHAPTER  XVIII— Some  Civic  Obligations  in  Relation  to  the 
City  and  a  few  Hints  for  Voters 169 

CHAPTER  XIX — The  Citizen  and  the  Church  and  the  Duty  of 
the  Former  to  Study  the  Question 177 

CHAPTER  XX— Seven  Features  that  Help  in  Making  the  Public 

Schools  a  Success— Value  of  Parents'  Associations 185 

CHAPTER  XXI— How  the  School  System  is  Enfeebled  and 
What  the  Conscientious  Citizen  Should  do  in  the  Matter. .  189 

CHAPTER  XXII— Obligations  Toward  the  Work  of  Humani- 
tarianism — Voluntary  and  Involuntary  Contributions — 
Labor  Unions  and  Co-operation 195 

CHAPTER  XXIII— Importance  of  a  High  Moral  Tone  in  a 
Community  and  Why  it  Should  be  Maintained 202 

CHAPTER  XXIV— Problems  of  the  Nation  Depend  for  Their 
Solution  Upon  the  Maintenance  and  Realization  of  Ideals.  209 


INTRODUCTION 

THE  general  scope  and  plan  of  the  book  gives  to 
the  reader  three  general  sections ;  the  body  politic 
is  in  the  first  section  considered  as  an  organism,  a 
machine,  and  the  method  of  reasoning  followed  is  that 
called  "analogy"  or  "correspondence,"  whereby  parts  and 
functions  of  the  aggregate  are  considered  in  the  same 
light  as  would  be  corresponding  parts  and  functions  of 
the  individual  organism.  The  second  section  takes  up  the 
forces  which  run  the  body  politic,  the  machine,  the  or- 
ganism. These  forces  are  assumed  to  be  subject  to  con- 
templation and  study.  They  are  assumed  to  be  varied 
manifestations  of  one  giant  force,  occasionally  named  as 
the  Divine  Human  Force.  If  the  book  were  a  treatise  on 
theology,  this  force  would  be  called  the  "Spirit  of  God," 
or  the  "Holy  Spirit."  It  is  assumed  to  be  the  Giant  In- 
tellect of  Deity,  hovering  above  the  structure  which  he 
has  called  into  being,  and  which  we  call  "human  society," 
and  more  frequently,  the  "Race"  or  the  "Race  Man," 
somewhat  in  the  same  way  as  the  human  soul  broods  over 
the  bodily  structure  wherein  for  its  pilgrimage  on  earth 
it  is  temporarily  encased.  This  Power  of  the  Creator 
is  assumed  to  be  intelligent  and  to  be  following  an  intel- 
ligent and  perfectly  comprehensible  plan,  which  begins 
in  the  cave  man  and  ends  in  the  present  triumphs  and 
the  future  victories  of  civilization,  which  will  abolish  war 


6  INTRODUCTION 

and  other  forms  of  brutality  as  it  has  abolished  slavery 
and  establish  and  maintain  the  larger  manhood.  Nor 
will  it  rest  until  it  has  lifted  man  up  to  that  pinnacle  of 
purposive  Providence,  where  he  will  touch  the  shadow  of 
Deity,  where  his  hand  will  be  outstretched  to  "touch  His 
garment's  hem." 

In  the  third  section  the  reader  is  given  a  few  practical 
hints,  any  or  all  of  which  he  can  follow  in  the  attainment 
of  practical  citizenship  and  the  larger  life  that  follows 
from  such  attainment. 

The  chapters  of  this  book  have  been  published  as  sepa- 
rate articles  in  the  Newark  Evening  News,  and  are  now 
revised  and  given  to  the  public  in  book  form  through  the 
courtesy  of  that  paper,  and  with  the  hope  that  a  use 
might  be  thereby  subserved  and  the  cause  of  larger  man- 
hood advanced. 

ADOL.PH  ROEDER. 
Orange,  New  Jersey, 

June,  1908. 


PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 


IN  THREE  PARTS 


PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 


PART  I 
THE  MACHINE 


CHAPTER  I 

HISTORIC  BACKGROUND  OF  THE  FUNDAMENTAL  PRINCIPLE 
OF  THE  FEDERAL  CONSTITUTION. 

REE  and  equal."  These  words  are  the  "Key- 
stone  of  the  Arch"  in  the  philosophic  struc- 
ture  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 
They  ring  out  clear  and  strong  in  the  Declaration  of 
Independence,  and  they  continue  as  an  undertone  into 
the  Constitution.  They  have  engrafted  themselves  up- 
on our  citizenship  with  such  force  and  assiduity  that 
they  have  become,  as  it  were,  self -understood. 

And  yet  a  study  of  citizenship,  such  as  is  here  con- 
templated, will  prove  incomplete  if  it  does  not  sustain 
that  assumption  by  some  manner  of  historic  back- 
ground, lest  we  mistake  "freedom"  for  license  and 
"equality"  for  the  deadly  level  of  economic  monotone, 
which  lies  at  the  bottom  of  all  our  thoughts  on  social 
economy,  and,  by  an  odd  coincidence,  of  heaven,  and 
which  makes  much  that  is  taught  along  these  lines  of 
little  avail,  since  it  neglects  the  personal  equation,  a  fac- 
tor which  cannot  be  neglected  without  serious  detri- 
ment to  the  resultant  conclusions  of  any  line  of  reason- 
ing. 

9 


10  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

Go  back  of  the  phrase  "free  and  equal"  and  see  what 
it  stands  for  in  the  way  of  human  attainment.  It  is 
necessary  to  go  very  far  back.  In  fact,  we  must  hark 
back  for  a  moment  to  the  beginning  of  things  and  ask 
the  student  to  glance  over  the  broad  lines  of  historic 
sequence  along  which  humanity  has  moved.  Begin  with 
the  cave  man,  that  condition  which  after  much  and 
serious  opposition  we  see  ourselves  forced  to  admit  as  the 
original  condition  of  society.  There  are  no  institutions. 
There  are  no  laws.  There  is  no  government.  Each  man 
and  each  little  family  group  stands  alone.  They  battle 
as  best  they  can  against  the  lurking  foe,  in  his  elemental 
and  animal  and  vegetable  form.  Each  group  faces  the 
terrific  storm  of  those  "post-carboniferous"  days  alone. 
It  faces  the  onslaught  of  the  cave  bear  and  of  the  cave 
lion  alone.  It  faces  the  deadly  vegetable  which  by  mis- 
take is  gathered  for  food,  alone. 

Presently  groups  of  families  form.  These  initiate 
the  tribal  state  of  society.  They  find  certain  matters  of 
common  interest  and  of  common  value.  They  fish  and 
hunt  in  groups.  The  law  begins  to  dawn,  in  that  cer- 
tain habits  are  established  and  the  thing  is  born  upon 
which  the  "law"  as  understood  by  human  beings  is 
based,  namely  precedent  and  experience.  It  is  found 
that  the  stream  selected  for  the  crude  forms  of  fishing 
wherewith  these  men  were  familiar  can  supply  only  cer- 
tain quantities  and  kinds  of  fish.  It  is  decided  that  one 
particular  stream  furnishes  enough  for  one  tribe  only, 
that  the  other  tribe  must  go  to  the  other  stream. 

This  is  the  initiament  of  private  property.  Large 
game  haunts  the  hills  at  a  little  distance  from  the  prim- 
itive cave  dwellings  and  rough  dugouts  of  the  tribe. 
It  takes  the  men  selected  for  the  chase  several  days  to 
reach  these  hills,  stalk  and  take  the  game  and  return. 


HISTORIC    BACKGROUND  11 

Meanwhile  others  of  the  tribe,  not  selected  for  the  chase, 
must  fish  to  furnish  food  for  the  tribe.  In  its  rude  out- 
lines this  is  the  fundamental  feature  of  labor  and  the 
division  of  labor.  The  fisherman  brings  home  on  one 
day  more  fish  than  are  needed,  while  the  hunter  has  no 
meat.  The  hunter  offers  the  animal  skin,  which  he  has 
made  for  himself,  in  trade  or  barter  for  some  fish.  This 
is  the  foundation  of  commerce. 

The  groups  or  tribe  are  at  first,  probably,  under  the 
control  of  women,  according  to  Karl  Pearson's  theory, 
and  the  matriarchate  is  established,  founded  upon  the 
home  sense  and  upon  the  fact  that  the  woman  makes  the 
home.  Traces  of  this  are  carried  down  to  our  times  in 
the  gipsy  establishment,  which  is  still  under  a  queen 
and  not  under  a  king,  except  as  a  subsidiary  regent 
under  his  wife.  Then  the  patriarchate  grows  apace. 
Larger  interests  come  in.  The  tribe  enters  upon  the  ag- 
ricultural stage,  which  follows  the  fishing  and  hunting 
condition.  The  sessile  element  is  introduced.  It  takes 
some  time  for  harvests  to  ripen.  Therefore  the  tribe 
remains  in  one  place  for  a  time. 

The  importance  of  permanency  of  dwelling  is  felt. 
The  tent  gives  way  to  the  house  and  the  city  "dawns." 
Then  follow  rapidly  the  familiar  steps  that  lead  to  the 
fenced  city,  to  the  baron's  castle,  to  feudalism,  to  sla- 
very and  serfdom,  as  forms  of  feudalism,  more  or  less 
emphasizing  the  individual  helplessness  of  those  depend- 
ent for  protection  upon  the  strong  arm  of  the  feudal 
baron,  of  the  overlord,  who  with  his  retainers  could 
fight  the  poor  man's  battles  and  protect  his  growing 
crops.  This  headman  was  Latinized  into  the  "dux" 
or  leader.  This  was  Anglicized  into  "duke"  and  these 
were  distinguished  into  those  who  had  a  larger  retinue 
or  the  "grand  dukes"  and  into  the  lesser  or  ordinary 


12  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

dukes,  and  then  the  distinctions  were  continued  until  the 
class  system  with  kings  and  emperors  was  introduced  as 
efficiently  into  the  lands  under  the  shadow  of  Christi- 
anity as  had  been  the  caste  system  into  the  land  of  the 
Brahman. 

These  two  ideas,  slavery  and  the  class  system,  did  the 
people  who  drew  up  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
face.  But  not  they  alone.  It  is  interesting  to  note  the 
various  more  or  less  prominent  symptoms,  which  indica- 
ted the  ascendency  of  the  thought  of  dissatisfaction 
with  existing  conditions,  so  far  as  liberty  and  equality 
were  concerned.  It  began  in  a  dim  way  to  creep  into 
the  literary  world,  this  ascendency  of  the  thought,  in 
the  domain  of  Belles  Lettres,  for  as  the  novel  written 
by  Mrs.  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe  crystallized  sentiment 
against  slavery  in  America,  so  a  novel  whose  title  is  for- 
gotten, written  by  an  English  woman  whose  name  no 
one  recalls,  brought  the  thought  to  the  surface  of  liter- 
ature. She  was  strongly  impressed  with  the  difference 
between  the  "noble  red  man"  as  English  and  French 
and  Spanish  explorers  found  him  in  America  and  the 
overdressed  puppets  of  royal  courts  in  her  day. 

The  red  man  of  whom  she  spoke  was  the  red  man 
whom  Fenimore  Cooper  selects  as  the  hero  in  "Deer- 
slayer"  and  the  "Last  of  the  Mohicans."  He  was  doubt- 
less a  very  real  person  before  the  white  man  spoiled  him 
with  "firewater"  and  treachery.  The  authoress  con- 
trasted the  education  of  the  red  man,  a  natural  educa- 
tion, with  the  education  of  the  courtier,  an  exceedingly 
artificial  education.  For  a  time  nothing  happened. 

The  book  seemed  to  disappear  from  the  surface  of  lit- 
erary consciousness.  But  it  had  not  disappeared.  It 
had  made  its  way  into  the  circles  of  philosophers  fre- 
quented by  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau  and  Jean  Paul 


HISTORIC    BACKGROUND  13 

Friedrich  Richter.  Either  the  book  and  its  embodied 
thought  or  the  thought  itself  as  a  disembodied  entity 
afloat  upon  the  mental  atmosphere,  reached  the  minds 
of  these  men.  And  they  added  to  the  literature  of  the 
world  the  thought  of  "natural  education"  as  contrasted 
with  artificial  education,  which  made  it  possible  on  the 
one  hand  for  Froebel  to  introduce  the  kindergarten  or 
natural  method  of  education  for  children,  and  the 
thought  of  "natural"  government  as  contrasted  with 
"artificial"  government,  which  crystallized  on  the  other 
hand  the  thought  of  the  inequality  of  things  and  the 
absence  of  freedom  of  the  individual. 

As  is  usual  in  these  things,  the  French  gave  most 
enthusiastic  voice  to  the  new  idea.  A  nation  which 
serves  as  the  thermometer  of  race  life,  as  does  the  French, 
naturally  indicates  upon  its  scale  the  highest  pitch  to 
which  an  idea  can  rise,  as  to-day  it  is  indicating  the 
highest  pitch  to  which  the  question  of  church  and  State 
can  be  raised,  from  which  will  grow  a  calm  and  sane  ad- 
justment of  things  presently,  but  probably  in  some  other 
nation,  as  was  the  case  in  the  transfer  of  the  idea  of 
liberty  and  equality,  which  was  an  apparently  unful- 
filled dream  in  France,  to  America,  where  it  is  being 
realized. 

The  antagonism  to  class  and  to  restraint  grew  apace 
in  France.  Its  outward,  literary  expression  takes  the 
shape  of  a  book  or  pamphlet  by  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau. 
He  had  not  yet  found  his  place.  He  thought  he  was  a 
musician.  He  was.  But  he  was  more  than  that.  If 
his  father  was  a  dancing  master  and  music  came  nat- 
urally to  the  boy,  his  father  was  also  a  Huguenot,  and 
the  Edict  of  Nantes  was  boiled  into  the  young  man's 
blood  as  an  elixir,  which  was  irresistible.  So,  in  1754, 
he  wrote  his  "Discourse  sur  PInegalite"  (Dissertation  on 


14  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

Inequality).  He  showed  that  the  inequality  apparent 
among  men  was  not  founded  on  the  laws  of  nature. 

The  French  Academy  had  crowned  a  previous  work 
of  his  with  a  prize.  It  dared  not  do  so  with  this  one. 
There  was  too  much  in  it  subversive  of  the  established 
order  of  things.  It  would  not  be  wise  to  crown  it  with 
a  prize.  But  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau  went  on.  He 
coined  the  phrase  "the  sovereign  people"  presently,  and 
was  driven  from  pillar  to  post  for  doing  it.  His  "Con- 
trat  Social,"  in  which  he  conveyed  that  message,  drove 
him  from  Paris  to  the  Hermitage  and  thence  into  exile. 
It  lost  him  his  friends,  Grimm,  Diderot,  Mme.  d'Epinay. 
It  finally  broke  his  health,  his  heart  and  the  thread  of 
his  life,  but  he  made  Mirabeau,  Franklin,  Jefferson 
and  many  others  possible. 

Then  Mirabeau,  Robespierre,  Danton,  Marat  take 
up  the  problem  of  equality — at  first  in  an  academic  way, 
as  a  matter  of  discussion  creating  two  sides,  the  Jacobin 
side,  and  the  Girondist  side,  the  one  to  stand  for  the  new 
order  of  things  and  the  other  for  the  established  order 
of  things,  and  these  men  discuss  and  discuss.  They  talk 
of  that  which  America  had  already  caught  from  France 
and  embodied  in  her  Declaration  of  Independence,  for 
there  seems  to  be  no  doubt  that  Rousseau  crystallized 
that  thought  for  Jefferson.  And  the  ultimate  result, 
so  far  as  it  worked  out  in  America,  may  be  said  thus 
far  to  have  been  an  eminent  success.  But  in  the  country 
of  its  origin  it  went  on  to  verify  the  sentence  in  Holy 
Writ  which  pictures  this  general  condition,  namely, 
"The  wise  men  returned  home  by  another  way."  It 
seems  almost  universally  true  that  Divine  Providence 
permits  a  thing  to  take  shape  toward  an  apparent  end, 
while  It  has  in  mind  another  and  entirely  different  end. 
So  the  Declaration  of  Rights  is  a  failure  in  France 


HISTORIC    BACKGROUND  15 

but  the  Declaration  of  Independence  embodying  the 
same  ideas  is  a  success  in  America  from  the  start. 

So,  in  France,  Mirabeau  unchained  the  subversive 
powers  of  the  revolution,  which  Napoleon  was  to  rechain 
in  the  end.  It  was  a  laudable  thing  that  these  men  tried 
to  do.  But  they  were  not  conversant  with  the  actual 
tremendous  force  of  the  powers  they  unleashed.  They 
did  not  dream  how  things  would  go.  So  little  were  they 
prepared  for  the  terrific  reaction  that  men  like  Robes- 
pierre have  until  recently  been  misunderstood — aye, 
they  accused  each  other  of  treachery.  His  reputation 
was  waiting  for  its  re-establishment — for  Hillaire  Belloc 
and  his  enthusiastic  and  evidently  adequate  defense. 

The  French  Revolution  arose.  If  the  student  desires 
to  follow  its  rise  and  fall,  let  him  read  Carlyle's  "French 
Revolution."  Saturated  with  grim  tenderness,  this 
author  pictures  in  remarkable,  vivid  and  accurate  out- 
lines the  divine  wrath  of  the  people  fulminating  against 
the  "accumulated  falsities  of  centuries."  But  it  was  de- 
structive work,  this.  It  was  not  constructive  work. 
Therefore  it  in  itself  could  not  stand.  For  the  agency 
which  destroys  always  in  the  end  destroys  itself.  The 
acid  that  disintegrates  a  salt  disappears  with  that  salt 
into  the  neutrality  of  a  base.  Or  as  the  Holy  Word 
hath  it,  "Evil  destroys  the  wicked."  So  Robespierre, 
despondent,  tries  to  commit  suicide  to  cheat  the  guillo- 
tine, Marat  gives  Charlotte  Corday  an  opportunity  of 
repeating  the  Scriptural  narrative  of  Jael  and  Sisera. 
And  Danton,  called  by  his  enemies  "the  butcher,"  is 
butchered.  "They  that  wield  the  sword,  by  the  sword 
shall  they  fall.  And  whoso  escapeth  the  sword  of  Ha- 
zael,  him  shall  Jehu  slay.  And  him  that  escapeth  from 
the  sword  of  Jehu,  shall  Elisha  slay." 

But  the  actual  work  had  been  done.    Dumont's  story 


16  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

of  "Freedom  and  Equality"  passed  over  into  our  Dec- 
laration of  Independence,  and  the  wisdom  of  Washing- 
ton, the  sagacity  of  Franklin,  the  insight  of  Jefferson, 
the  enthusiasm  of  Lafayette  and  the  diplomacy  of 
Necker,  urged  it  into  the  open  and  gave  it  fair  trial 
and  achieved  its  success.  That  the  two  ideas  were  alike, 
the  French  and  the  American,  will  be  evident  from  a 
comparison  of  them.  Here  is  the  form  which  Dumont 
gave  the  thought,  August  26,  1789 : 

"All  men  are  born  and  remain  equal  in  rights.  Social 
distinctions  can  be  founded  only  on  the  general  good. 
Law  is  the  expression  of  the  general  will  and  every  citi- 
zen has  a  right  to  participate  in  its  enactment,  either 
personally  or  through  his  representative.  Public  bur- 
dens should  be  borne  by  all  members  of  the  State  in 
proportion  to  their  several  ability.  The  elective  fran- 
chise should  be  extended  to  all.  No  one  should  be  ac- 
cused, arrested  or  imprisoned  except  according  to  due 
process  of  law.  No  one  should  be  disturbed  on  account 
of  his  religious  opinion.  There  must  be  freedom  of 
thought,  of  speech,  of  the  press.  All  citizens  have  a 
right  to  decide  personally  or  through  their  representa- 
tives as  to  the  necessity  of  public  contributions,  their 
application,  disbursement  and  so  forth." 

Edmund  Burke's  critique  of  Dumont's  thesis  called 
into  being  Thomas  Paine's  "Rights  of  Man"  and  so 
Englished  that  which  had  been  French.  But  bodily  the 
thought  seems  to  have  passed  over  into  our  "Declara- 
tion of  Independence"  and  there  to  have  assumed  this 
form: 

"All  men  are  created  equal.  They  are  endowed  by 
their  Creator  with  certain  inalienable  rights.  Among 
these  are  life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness.  To 
secure  these  rights  governments  are  instituted  among 


HISTORIC   BACKGROUND  17 

men  deriving  their  just  powers  from  the  consent  of  the 
governed.  Whenever  any  form  of  government  becomes 
destructive  of  these  ends,  it  is  the  right  of  the  people  to 
alter  or  to  abolish  it,  and  to  institute  a  new  govern- 
ment, laying  its  foundation  in  such  form  as  to  them 
will  seem  most  likely  to  effect  their  safety  and  happi- 
ness." 

There  is  difference  in  expression  only,  and  what  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  does  not  distinctly  enunci- 
ate is  involved  in  the  Constitution. 

Thus  the  French  gave  shape  to  the  thought  which 
America  was  to  work  out  into  actual  practise.  And 
America  naturally  turned  to  the  French  because,  from 
the  nature  of  the  case,  and  under  the  combination  of 
circumstances  which  gave  immediate  rise  to  their  decla- 
ration of  independence,  it  was  natural  for  them  to  turn 
away  from  the  English  and  toward  the  French.  For 
centuries  the  pendulum  of  rule  and  possession  had  swung 
back  and  forth  between  these  two  nations.  For  a  time 
the  centre  of  power  would  be  held  by  the  one,  then  for 
a  time  by  the  other;  sometimes  France  would  be  king 
in  England  and  sometimes  England  would  be  king  in 
France.  Hence,  as  between  the  two  powers,  it  was  com- 
paratively a  foregone  conclusion  that  America  in  time 
of  trouble  with  England  would  look  to  France :  and  she 
did  so.  Hence,  not  only  was  the  seed  sown  in  France 
but  the  soil  was  prepared  there,  from  which  the  strong 
and  sturdy  young  plant  of  "Free  and  Equal"  was  to  be 
transplanted  to  American  soil;  there  to  flourish,  to  ma- 
ture and  to  ripen  into  the  successes  and  the  problems 
which  face  us  under  the  guerdon  of  that  aegis  to-day. 


18  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 


CHAPTER  II 

MONISM  AND  DUALISM  IN   GOVERNMENT. 

RETURN  to  the  keynote  of  the  Declaration, 
"Free  and  Equal."  Think  of  the  words  mathe- 
matically. A  thing  can  be  equal  to  another 
thing  only  if  they  are  both  alike  as  to  their  condition, 
environment  and  substance.  The  emphasis  placed  upon 
one  must  be  the  same  as  the  emphasis  placed  upon  the 
other.  The  weight  given  to  one  must  be  the  same  as  the 
weight  given  the  other.  Hence  equality  involves  always 
two  things  and  never  one. 

Freedom  mathematically  considered  is  the  perfect 
poise  of  a  thing  between  two  exactly  equal  forces.  Psy- 
chologically it  is  the  same.  Morally  it  is  the  same.  If 
I  am  to  be  free  in  my  choice  of  a  thing  the  arguments 
for  and  the  arguments  against  must  be  equal  in  force 
and  of  equal  value.  If  the  arguments  against  prepon- 
derate, I  would  be  unable  to  choose  in  freedom,  since  I 
would  be  forced  to  decide  against.  Hence  freedom  rests 
upon  the  influence  of  two  equal  but  opposite  forces. 
Hence  a  government  involving  freedom  as  its  funda- 
mental, and  equality  as  its  basis,  must  be  one  in  which 
there  shall  be  two  contending  forces  (usually  called  po- 
litical parties)  of  equal  or  nearly  equal  strength  and  in- 
tensity. 

Again  trace  this.  If  you  compare  the  governments 
of  the  world  of  to-day  with  the  governments  of  the 
world  two  centuries  ago,  you  will  find  that  200  years 
ago  all  the  forms  of  government  were  monarchic,  with 


MONISM    AND    DUALISM  19 

the  Swiss  Republic  standing  almost  alone,  since  spas- 
modic efforts  on  the  part  of  the  governments  of  an- 
tiquity to  establish  republican  forms  of  government 
cannot  well  be  given  any  large  significance  in  this  con- 
nection. But  to-day  the  following  conditions  hold  true 
— there  are  twenty-seven  republics  and  aggregates  of 
federated  States — called  in  German  "Staatenbund"  and 
"Bundesstaat,"  for  neither  of  which  words  we  have  an 
exact  English  equivalent.  Of  these  the  largest  aggre- 
gates in  the  way  of  actual  republics  are  the  United 
States  and  France,  while  the  largest  aggregates  in  the 
way  of  federated  States  are  the  Canadian  Northwest 
and  Germany. 

Let  me  add  to  this  the  well-known  fact  that  a  form 
of  government  usually  called  "limited  monarchy"  lends 
itself  to  the  freedom  and  equality  essential  as  funda- 
mental thoughts  of  a  republic  with  such  facility  as  to 
virtually  make  several  of  these  countries  republics  in  the 
sense  that  their  government  is  quite  distinctly  the  voice 
of  the  people.  England  has  been  such  a  form  of  gov- 
ernment since  the  early  days  of  Queen  Victoria,  while 
Germany  is  rapidly  approaching  a  condition  resembling 
England's  as  nearly  as  the  differences  of  nationality  and 
environment  permit.  The  forms  of  autocratic  govern- 
ment are  now  confined  almost  entirely  to  the  less  enlight- 
ened peoples  of  the  earth,  to  the  Asiatic  peoples  largely, 
to  such  countries  of  Persia,  Turkey  and  others,  while 
even  in  Russia,  China  and  Japan  the  monarchy  has 
been  dealt  a  deathblow. 

Compare  the  two  forms  of  government  philosophically 
and  you  find  the  autocratic  form  of  government  to 
consist  in  the  control  of  the  destiny  of  a  people  by  one 
man,  by  one  class  of  men,  by  one  body  of  men.  In  the 
early  days  of  antiquity  the  most  general  form  was  the 


20  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

"one  man"  form.  He  was  called  Sultan,  Shah,  Czar 
(which  is  Russian  for  Caesar),  Emperor,  Autocrat. 
Monarch  is  Greek  for  "One  Ruler."  Into  the  hands  of 
this  one  man  all  or  great  power  was  given.  If  he  was  a 
good  man,  the  result  was  beneficial  to  the  people;  if  he 
was  a  bad  man  the  result  was  disastrous  to  the  people 
and  ultimately  to  him,  since  some  one  was  sure  to  assassi- 
nate him  and  put  him  out  of  the  way,  sometimes  sur- 
reptitiously, as  was  the  father  of  the  present  Czar  and 
a  long  line  of  others,  or  openly  and  boldly,  as  was  Caesar 
by  Brutus  and  his  fellow-conspirators,  "for  the  safety 
of  the  State,"  and  another  long  line  of  others.  Gradu- 
ally the  power  of  one  man  was  lost  sight  of  in  the  power 
of  a  group.  This  group  was  a  group  of  barons,  or  of 
mighty  men-at-arms,  such  as  in  the  days  of  Hastings 
and  Warwick  the  Kingmaker  (fifteenth  century);  or  a 
feudal  lordship,  or  an  aristocracy,  as  in  the  days  of  the 
French  Revolution;  or  a  bureaucracy,  such  as  was  the 
actual  cause  of  the  crumbling  of  Russia's  power;  or  a 
plutocracy,  such  as  some  fear  in  America,  if  the  ac- 
cretion of  enormous  fortunes  continues. 

In  these  forms  of  government  one  party  has  every- 
thing to  say  and  the  other  nothing.  Hence  this  may 
be  called  "monism"  or  "one-ism"  in  government.  While 
into  other  forms  of  government,  such  as  the  more  mod- 
ern, the  element  of  dualism  has  been  naturally  introduced. 
And  two  parties  have  arisen,  with  a  more  or  less  per- 
fect form  of  government,  in  which  the  governors  and  the 
governed  have  a  fair  and  equal  share  of  interest  and 
power.  Disturbed  as  this  ideal  has  at  times  been,  and 
may  be  now  in  the  United  States,  it  lies  at  the  bottom 
of  all  we  do  and  all  we  aim  to  do  in  government. 

In  order  to  secure  a  complete  survey  of  the  funda- 
mental idea  of  dualism,  the  student  may  be  referred  to 


MONISM    AND    DUALISM  21 

two  lines  of  thought,  which  materially  assist  in  under- 
standing the  actual  values  to  be  attached  to  the  prac- 
tical and  the  philosophic  sides  of  citizenship  with  ref- 
erence to  this  principle,  which  is,  in  general,  involved 
in  the  dualism  of  Congress  (Senate  and  House  of  Rep- 
resentatives) and  of  State  Legislatures  (Senate  and  As- 
sembly). 

The  first  line  of  thought  is  that  of  liistoric  sequence 
as  modified  by  recent  scientific  investigation.  The  scien- 
tist of  to-day  has  discovered  that  the  life  of  the  indi- 
vidual is  an  epitome  of  the  life  of  the  race;  that  we  all 
pass  through  the  various  conditions  through  which  the 
race  has  passed,  and  each  individual  does  so  more  or  less 
rapidly.  Thus  we  find  the  individual  passing  rapidly 
through  all  stages  of  animate  creation  during  prenatal 
days;  through  a  vegetative  stage;  through  a  series  of 
stages  resembling  the  various  strata  of  animal  life.  Af- 
ter birth  the  individual  passes  through  the  various  ages 
of  the  world  of  humanity.  Thus  the  boy  (and  some- 
times the  girl)  will  show  an  almost  innate  desire  to  throw 
stones  at  a  moving  thing,  for  the  reason  that  the  pro- 
genitors of  the  race  in  the  cave  days  had  to  throw  stones 
at  moving  things  for  reasons  of  self-preservation.  The 
time  when  the  boy  wants  to  wear  paper  helmets  and  a 
wooden  sword  corresponds  with  the  time  when  the  race 
was  in  its  militant  or  military  condition,  as  illustrated 
most  markedly  by  the  days  of  Roman  conquest  about  the 
time  of  Christ. 

Then  the  individual  passes  into  the  romantic  stage. 
Days  come  when  he  dreams  beautiful  pink  dreams  with 
golden  linings.  He  has  wonderful  ambitions  as  to  what 
he  is  to  do,  and  wonderful  ideas  as  to  the  opposite  sex. 
That  this  time  corresponds  exactly  with  the  period  of 
world  history  in  which  the  minnesinger  and  the  Palmer 


22  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

sang  their  love  songs,  and  in  which  knights  jousted  for 
the  favor  of  their  ladies,  goes  without  saying.  The  days 
of  youthful  ambition  are  the  days  "when  knighthood  is 
in  flower."  Then  the  boy  is  thrown  out  into  the  cold 
and  calculating  world  and  he  reaches  that  stage  of  com- 
mercialism which  was  inaugurated  by  Venice  and  in 
Lombardy,  but  amounted  to  little  until  England  took 
hold  and  the  name  of  Threadneedle  Street,  foreshadow- 
ing Wall  Street,  became  a  thing  to  conjure  with. 

And  thence  the  individual  steps  into  the  rationalism, 
and  skepticism  and  the  cynicism  of  ripe  youth,  corre- 
sponding exactly  with  the  days  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, when  men  wanted  to  throw  overboard  all  manner 
of  superstition  and  wanted  to  change  even  the  calendar 
and  carried  the  Goddess  of  Reason  through  the  streets. 
And  immediately  after  these  days  of  youthful  cynicism, 
skepticism  and  rationalism,  thank  God,  come  the  days 
of  sober  manhood.  And  upon  these  days  have  you  and 
I  entered  in  this  decade  of  the  "awakening  of  public 
conscience." 

There  is  every  indication  of  this  thing,  which  you 
and  I  may  have  mistaken  for  a  series  of  local  upheavals 
and  temporary  reform,  actually  being  the  dawn  of  the 
manhood  and  the  virility  of  the  race  with  America  set- 
ting the  pace  and  the  example.  Let  us  hope  so  and 
keep  the  possibility  of  it  firmly  in  mind.  Let  us  say  to 
ourselves,  "We  have  been  children  hitherto,  playing  at 
elections,  playing  at  the  'game  of  politics,'  playing  with 
the  fire  and  mud  of  corruption.  Let  us  be  men  now  and 
come  out  into  the  open,  with  a  square  deal  to  the  other 
fellow,  with  charity  to  all  and  malice  to  none,  and  with 
an  eye  single  to  honor  and  integrity,  which  will  meet 
with  the  approval  of  Him  who  said,  'Let  thine  eye  be 
single,  and  thy  body  will  be  light.' " 


MONISM    AND    DUALISM  23 

So  far,  then,  as  the  evolutional  features  of  history  are 
concerned  we  may  assume  with  more  or  less  confidence 
that  the  age  of  the  world's  manhood  is  upon  us  and  that 
the  changes  going  on  about  us  are  larger,  more  far- 
reaching  than  we  suspect,  and  have  in  them  more  of  the 
universal  social  uplift  than  may  show  in  the  particular 
local  centre  where  one  or  the  other  of  us  may  find  his 
habitat  and  his  work. 

But  if  this  historic  survey  have  any  value  whatever, 
that  value  consists  in  the  fact  that  it  gives  us  a  sum- 
mary of  two  conditions;  one  the  condition  of  the  indi- 
vidual while  he  is  not  able  to  take  care  of  himself,  the 
other  that  condition  in  which  he  is  able  to  take  care  of 
himself.  For  while  the  individual  is  young,  paternalism 
must  be  exercised  over  him.  He  does  not  know  what  to 
do  and  he  must  be  told.  This  is  at  bottom  the  founda- 
tion principle  of  the  monarchy,  of  the  paternalistic  gov- 
ernment, both  in  church  and  State.  During  the  early 
ages  of  the  world  men  lived  in  conditions  of  helplessness 
and  ignorance,  which  made  it  impossible  for  them  to 
think  for  themselves.  Some  few,  bright,  keen  intellects, 
which  could  grasp  the  more  intricate  problems  of  life, 
must  needs  throw  themselves  into  the  van,  lead  the  masses 
and  gradually  control  the  masses. 

And  so,  for  many  centuries,  the  paternalistic  forms 
of  government  were  legitimate  and  proper.  But  as  the 
individual  grows,  it  is  assumed  that  he  learns  to  take  care 
of  himself.  Parental  authority  wanes,  gradually  and 
naturally,  if  parents  and  children  are  intelligent  and  cul- 
tured ;  with  more  or  less  violence,  if  both  parties  are  not 
so.  But  the  relation  of  a  man  to  his  father  gradually 
changes  from  that  of  subject  to  equal.  The  boy  and  his 
father  are  presently,  if  both  be  intelligent,  friends  and 


24  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

chums.  If  they  be  unintelligent,  they  drift  apart  and 
become  strangers  or  even  at  variance. 

So  the  paternalistic  government  gives  way  to  that  of 
equality.  It  gives  way  to  that  form  of  government 
where  the  men  who  are  in  control  of  things  are  "of  the 
people"  and  do  things  "for  the  people"  at  the  request 
"of  the  people,"  if— and  this  is  a  large  "if"— both 
parties  be  intelligent.  If  not,  there  must  needs  arise  con- 
ditions of  strain  in  which  the  governed  resent  the  im- 
position of  unjust  measures,  while  the  governors  resent 
with  equai  vigor  "interference"  with  "their"  affairs. 
Civic  education  aims  at  that  point  where  the  standard 
of  intelligence  shall  be  raised  in  such  a  way  as  to  bring 
about  a  condition  of  perfect  poise  between  the  people 
and  the  representatives  of  the  people.  Hence  the  ad- 
vance toward  the  manhood  of  the  race  is  an  advance 
from  paternalistic  or  monistic  or  monarchic  forms  of 
government  toward  the  dualistic  forms,  of  which  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  is  a  most  fit  and  emi- 
nent example. 

Those  who  desire  to  carry  the  thought  of  dualism 
further  along  lines  of  original  research  are  advised  to 
take  up  the  second  line  of  thought  indicated  above,  name- 
ly the  dualism  of  the  world,  a  hint  of  which  can  be 
condensed  into  the  following  brief  list  of  words:  Po- 
larity, the  positive  and  negative  side  of  any  force.  Bi- 
sexuality,  carried  as  far  down  into  the  vegetable  king- 
dom and  the  domain  of  flowers  as  the  student  cares  to 
carry  it.  Bilateralism,  or  the  fact  that  the  Creator  gives 
humanity  two  eyes,  two  ears,  two  hands,  two  feet  and 
so  forth.  Bicameralism,  or  the  fact  that  we  have  found 
it  wise  to  have  two  bodies  of  representatives  in  our  Legis- 
latures, as  expressed  in  our  House  of  Representatives 
and  Senate  in  Washington,  our  Senate  and  Assembly  in 


MONISM    AND    DUALISM  25 

our  State  Legislatures,  in  Select  and  Common  Council 
in  some  of  our  municipal  governments,  in  the  House  of 
Lords  and  the  House  of  Commons  in  England,  and  so 
forth.  Bi-socialism,  or  the  existence  of  two  parties  to 
a  contract,  as  in  business  and  marriage;  as  in  the  two 
great  political  parties,  such  as  the  Whigs  and  the  Tories, 
the  Republicans  and  the  Democrats,  the  Protectionists 
and  the  Free  Traders,  the  Liberals  and  Conservatives, 
and  so  forth.  Any  or  all  of  these  lines  of  research  will 
convince  the  student  that  the  dualistic  form  of  govern- 
ment involved  in  our  Federal  Constitution  is  not  based 
upon  chance  or  historic  fatuity,  but  upon  fundamental 
laws,  both  historic  and  biologic. 

A  word  now  as  to  one  practical  development  of  this 
thought.  The  citizen  is  frequently  faced  by  the  general 
proposition  of  the  relation  of  his  political  affiliations  to 
the  business  of  the  municipality  in  which  he  lives.  He 
finds  himself  trying  to  adjust  the  demands  of  the  city  to 
those  of  the  political  party  with  which,  in  State  and 
National  affairs,  he  has  customarily  acted.  The  reformer 
will  tell  him :  "Drop  your  political  affiliations  in  munici- 
pal affairs.  Vote  for  good  men  irrespective  of  party. 
The  best  man  available  for  a  certain  position  and  the 
most  competent  man  willing  to  serve,  may  be  of  a  party 
to  which  you  have  no  desire  to  owe  allegiance.  Never 
mind  his  party.  Vote  for  the  most  competent  man."  The 
reason  he  fears,  is  this :  He  thinks  that  neglect  of  party 
lines  will  work  disastrously  because  the  two  sides  of  an 
issue  will  not  be  enforced,  and  because,  in  his  mind,  these 
two  sides  can  be  enforced  and  carried  only  by  the  two 
parties  with  which  he  has  become  familiar. 

That  is  erroneous.  No  important  question  arises  in 
a  community  about  which  there  will  not  be  an  immediate, 
healthy  and  candid  difference  of  opinion.  Test  it  in  a 


26  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

few  familiar  local  issues.  Propose  to  establish  an  electric 
light  plant  to  be  owned,  controlled  and  managed  by  the 
municipality,  and  your  citizens  will  immediately  take 
sides  more  or  less  vigorously.  There  will  arise  two  dis- 
tinct parties,  one  utterly  and  absolutely  in  favor  of  the 
plant,  another  as  utterly  and  absolutely  opposed  to  it. 
There  is  no  need  of  arraigning  Republican  and  Demo- 
cratic sentiment  one  against  the  other.  The  issue  stands 
on  its  own  feet.  Let  the  citizens  decide  that  question 
upon  the  majority  basis  which  we  have  chosen  as  our 
guide  and  authority  in  such  matters.  If  most  of  the  citi- 
zens are  in  favor,  put  in  your  plant;  if  most  of  them 
are  opposed,  let  there  be  no  plant. 

A  corporation  wants  a  franchise;  a  railroad  wants 
to  elevate  its  tracks  and  wants  the  municipality  to  con- 
tribute toward  the  expense  of  that  improvement;  an  or- 
ganization wants  to  evade  its  taxes;  it  is  proposed  to 
enforce  an  act  for  the  payment  of  arrearages  in  taxes ; 
the  town  wants  a  new  High  School  building,  and  so 
forth  without  end.  No  such  issue  can  be  raised  in  a 
municipality  without  two  parties  arising  in  regard  to  it 
almost  instantaneously.  And  when  the  election  comes, 
nothing  is  requisite  but  to  secure  the  expression  of  the 
candidates  for  municipal  office,  as  to  the  policy  for  which 
they  will  respectively  stand,  and  the  election  will  decide 
itself,  without  reference  to  the  great  political  parties  and 
absolutely  upon  its  own  merits. 

The  citizen  who  has  mastered  the  essential  dualism  of 
our  government  and  of  our  nature  will  have  no  fears 
on  this  score.  In  local  elections  he  will  vote  for  men, 
in  State  and  National  elections  he  may  vote  for  his  party, 
if  he  will ;  but  he  will  find  it  not  at  all  impossible  to  carry 
the  principle  forward  even  into  its  most  complex  expres- 
sion, if  he  care  to  do  so. 


THE  TRINE  27 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  TRINAL  DIVISION  OF  GOVERNMENT  MACHINERY THE 

LEGISLATIVE,   THE  JUDICIAL  AND  THE  EXECUTIVE. 

WE  divide  the  machinery   of  government  into 
three  functions — the  legislative,  the  judicial 
and  the  executive.      So  much  is  familiar  to 
every  citizen  from  his  schooldays.     Less  familiar  it  may 
be  to  him,  that  the  sense  of  pleasure  which  came  to  him 
from  reading  this  sentence  during  his  school  and  college 
days  is  shared  by  every  foreigner,  as  soon  as  the  sen- 
tence meets  his  eye.     Least  familiar  may  be  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  origin  of  this  pleasure. 

In  olden  times  our  forbears  were  accustomed  to  think 
of  such  a  sense  of  satisfaction  as  being  in  some  dim  way 
connected  with  vital  functions  seated  in  the  deeper  re- 
cesses of  the  mind  or  soul,  and  they  therefore,  in  an 
equally  dim  way,  attached  a  sense  of  "sacredness"  to 
certain  numbers,  such  as  three,  four,  seven  and  twelve. 
There  was  at  first  no  reason  for  this. 

But  presently  men  began  to  philosophize  upon  the 
topic,  and  when  the  Greeks  and  the  Hindus  took  hold 
of  matters  of  this  kind,  they  usually  went  through  the 
entire  process  of  reasoning  so  thoroughly  that  little  is 
left  for  their  successors  to  accomplish.  As  to  the  num- 
ber three,  this  is  what  they  found.  Time  has  three  con- 
ditions: a  past,  a  present  and  a  future,  of  which  the 
past  and  future  are  realizable  parts  and  the  present  is 
a  non-realizable  part,  for  as  you  try  to  think  of  the 
actual  present  moment,  it  is  gone  and  is  past.  The  pres- 


28  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

ent,  therefore,  is  a  sort  of  pivot  on  which  the  past  and 
future  hinge. 

In  the  same  way  Space  has  three  conditions,  which  the 
Anglo-Saxon  tribes  have  defined  as  "length,  breadth 
and  thickness,"  while  the  Indo- Aryans  have  settled  upon 
"Space,  Time  and  Condition"  as  being  the  definition. 
This  latter  because  both  space  and  time  are  matters  of 
relationship,  or  relative  quantities,  and  the  word  "con- 
dition" in  reference  to  space  could  be  assumed  to  take 
the  same  place  as  the  word  "present"  in  relation  to  time. 
Whichever  may  be  considered  the  deeper  and,  therefore, 
truer  definition,  the  fact  remains  that  the  element  of 
space,  like  the  element  of  time,  is  subject  to  the  num- 
ber three  for  its  dimensions.  This  emphasized  the  num- 
ber three  as  a  sacred  or  important  number. 

Then  our  philosophers  turned  to  Nature  in  her  mani- 
festations and  they  found  that  she  arrayed  herself  nat- 
urally into  three  kingdoms;  into  the  mineral,  the  vege- 
table and  the  animal  kingdom ;  and  that,  no  matter  how 
man  might  interdefine  and  segregate  distinct  groups  of 
animate  or  inanimate  matter,  organized  or  unorganized, 
this  division  into  three  remained  the  essential  and  the 
leading  division.  This  confirmed  them  in  their  idea  that 
three  is  a  "sacred"  number,  of  larger  significance  than 
others.  And  when  the  scientist  discovered  that  all  mat- 
ter had  three  conditions,  namely,  a  solid,  a  liquid  and  a 
gaseous  condition,  it  confirmed  the  idea  still  more  strong- 
ly, which  confirmation  took  a  yet  more  radical  form  in 
the  mind  of  the  Christian  philosopher,  when  he  discov- 
ered, not  only  that  there  was  indicated  to  him  a  Trinity 
in  the  Godhead,  but  that  the  trinity  was  carried  intc 
many  details  of  the  Holy  Book,  showing  design  on  the 
part  of  the  Author  to  emphasize  that  number  beyonoj 
any  other  as  indicating  a  statement  of  the  completeness 


THE  TRINE  29 

or  entirety  of  a  thing,  beyond  which  men  could  say 
"there  is  nothing  further." 

For  if  you  say  of  time  that  it  is  past,  present  and 
future,  you  have  said  all  there  is  to  say.  If  you  have 
said  of  space,  "length,  breadth  and  thickness"  you  have 
said  all  there  is  to  say;  if  you  say  of  the  condition  of 
matter,  "solid,  fluid  and  gaseous,"  you  have  said  all 
there  is  to  say.  And  so  forth.  Hence  the  Christian  was 
ready  to  adopt  the  form  of  the  Trinity,  and  to  interpret 
it  as  best  he  could,  not  only  because  it  collected  into  a 
new  and  clear  relationship  all  the  various  trinities  devised 
by  the  peoples  of  antiquity,  such  as  the  Egyptian,  Osiris, 
Isis  and  Horus ;  the  Hindu,  Brahm,  Krisna  and  Vishnu ; 
the  Roman,  Jupiter  (who  ruled  the  sky  above),  Nep- 
tune (who  ruled  the  level-reaches  of  the  earth  and  sea) 
and  Pluto  (who  ruled  the  dark  world  below) — but  the 
thought  also  covered  the  evident  trinities  introduced 
throughout  the  Sacred  Writings,  when  we  are  told  of 
three  patriarchs,  Abraham,  Isaac  and  Jacob;  of  three 
great  Kings,  Saul,  David  and  Solomon,  after  whom  the 
kingdom  was  divided;  of  three  great  prophets,  Isaiah, 
Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel,  and  finally  of  three  prominent 
disciples  who  are  admitted  into  the  more  intimate  life  of 
the  Master,  Peter,  James  and  John.  Any  one  will  note 
that  these  trines  have  grown  very  familiar  to  the  reader 
of  the  Bible  and  have  served  to  strengthen  the  habit  of 
considering  this  number  "sacred"  according  to  such  def- 
inition of  "sacred"  as  the  individual  may  care  to  use. 

But  these  things  would  lose  in  value  if  they  were  not 
based  upon  some  element  of  individual  psychology, 
which  serves  as  a  sentient  field,  or  as  a  means  of  recog- 
nizing the  peculiar  value  of  the  term.  And  it  is  this  ele- 
ment to  which  attention  should  be  called.  Every  action 
on  the  part  of  the  individual  postulates  three  things.  It 


30  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

postulates  the  action  itself;  it  postulates  intelligence  or 
the  "know  how,"  and  it  postulates  desire,  or  wish,  or 
willingness  to  do.  For  everything  you  do  involves  the 
idea  whether  you  "want  to"  do  it  or  not;  whether  you 
"know  how"  to  do  it  or  not,  and  whether  it  is  finally 
done.  If  you  call  the  "want  to,"  "will,"  the  "know  how," 
"understanding"  and  the  actual  accomplishment  "act" 
you  will  find  that  every  activity  of  man  involves  a  trine 
of  "will,  understanding  and  act"  which  makes  him  able 
to  recognize  and  hail  every  trinity  he  finds  outside  him- 
self as  a  familiar  thing  and  as  an  old  friend.  Hence  the 
sense  of  pleasure  when  we  run  across  such  an  "old 
friend"  in  the  Federal  Constitution,  in  the  idea  of  a 
trinity  of  governmental  function,  the  legislative,  the 
judiciary  and  the  executive. 

This  thought  is  so  fundamental  to  the  philosophy  of 
practical  citizenship  that  I  may  be  permitted  to  dwell 
upon  it  a  little  longer. 

Suppose  a  house  is  to  be  built.  The  first  process  is 
the  "want  to."  A  need  of  such  a  house  must  be  felt 
by  some  one.  After  that  is  felt,  and  the  feeling  is  rep- 
resented by  the  word  "will,"  as  here  defined,  or  "the  will 
to  build,"  we  enter  upon  the  domain  of  the  "understand- 
ing." There  must  be  a  plan  of  some  kind.  Some  one, 
either  the  person  who  wants  to  build  the  house,  or  some 
one  else,  must  "know  how"  to  build.  And,  finally,  the 
house  is  built,  and  we  enter  upon  the  domain  of  "act"  or 
"labor."  Now,  if  the  reader  will  think  this  proposition 
over,  he  will  find  that  "all"  the  territory  of  activity  has 
been  covered  by  this  trine.  And  upon  further  thought 
he  will  find  that  there  is  a  twofold  manner  of  application, 
for  the  man  can  do  all  three  things  himself,  or  he  can 
relegate  them  to  others. 

Take,  first,  the  "will"  idea,  and  you  will  see  that  the 


THE  TRINE  31 

man  may  "want  to"  build  the  house  for  himself,  or  he 
may  desire  to  meet  the  "wants"  of  some  one  else.  He 
may  "wish  to"  build  an  apartment-house  for  others  to 
live  in ;  he  may  "want  to"  build  a  store  to  rent  to  some 
one  else.  There  are,  therefore,  two  factors  in  this  first 
proposition — the  man  himself,  or  some  one  else,  for 
whom  he  acts,  and  whose  wishes  in  the  matter  he  tries, 
more  or  less  successfully,  to  meet. 

As  soon  as  you  take  up  this  latter  proposition  you 
find  that  the  man  is  aiming  to  satisfy  the  wishes  of  any 
one  or  of  any  series  of  individuals  in  a  large  possible 
group.  He  does  not  know  who  his  tenants  are  going  to 
be.  He  builds  for — please  attend  closely  to  this  point — 
the  people  at  large.  As  soon  as  man  does  anything  for 
any  one  else  he  faces  the  people  at  large  and  "stands 
for"  the  people  at  large.  To  stand  for  any  one  else 
is  called  to  "represent;"  hence  the  man  who  does  any- 
thing for  anybody  else  becomes  a  "representative,"  and 
— again  note — ceases  to  have  a  will  of  his  own,  so  far  as 
that  activity  is  concerned.  It  is  in  no  wise  a  question 
what  he  wants,  but  what  "the  other  fellow"  (that  is, 
"the  people")  wants.  If  he  is  building  a  store  for  rent 
he  might  himself  want  a  large  store,  yet  build  small  ones 
to  accommodate  those  who  want  small  stores  at  a  low 
rental.  Or  vice  versa,  he  might  himself  need  only  a  small 
store,  yet  build  one  small  one  and  two  or  three  large  ones 
for  the  possible  "other  fellow."  Actually,  when  he 
builds  with  a  view  to  a  possible  tenant  he  enters  upon  the 
ground  of  "representatives"  with  more  or  less  success, 
depending  largely  upon  his  business  sense  and  upon  his 
insight  into  the  needs  of  "the  people." 

Now  take  up  the  second  proposition — the  "know  how." 
In  any  case  the  man  himself  who  wants  to  build  may 
"know  how."  He  may  be  his  own  architect.  He  may 


32  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

design  his  own  house,  plan  all  its  rooms,  get  the  whole 
thing  on  paper  and  prepare  his  own  working  plans.  Or 
he  may  relegate  that  work  to  some  one  else.  He  may  ask 
an  architect  to  do  it  for  him.  The  architect  becomes 
the  "representative"  of  the  person  who  wants  the  house 
built.  He  has  no  "will  of  his  own  in  the  matter,"  but 
lends  his  knowledge  to  the  original  "wanter."  He  is  dis- 
tinctly representative,  and  fails  in  his  work  when  he  fails 
to  be  representative.  And  the  arrangement,  contract 
or  what  not  between  the  two  men,  immediately  it  enters 
into  force,  becomes  "representative"  government  in  min- 
iature. In  a  case  where  the  man  builds  for  some  one 
else  the  man  himself  "represents"  the  "people"  and  the 
architect  represents  the  man  and  through  him  the  people. 

Now  to  the  third  plane  of  activity — the  execution  of 
the  plan.  Here  we  reach  the  builder,  the  contractor,  the 
laborer.  He  takes  the  thing  which  the  first  man  wanted, 
and  which  the  second  man  planned,  and  enacts  it  into 
actual  form  and  building.  Again,  a  man  may  be  his  own 
builder.  He  may  not  only  want  to  build  the  house,  but 
he  may  also  plan  it  and  actually  build  it,  as  many  do; 
but  he  may  relegate  the  building  to  a  third  party,  and 
so  bring  about  a  third  form  of  "representation."  For 
again  the  builder  has  neither  will  nor  plan  of  his  own. 
He  proposes  to  follow  the  working-drawings  and  speci- 
fications which  are  furnished  him  and  to  thus  fulfil  his 
contract.  I  emphasize  these  points  to  show  that  en- 
trance upon  a  "representative  form"  of  activity,  or  of 
doing  a  thing  "for  some  one  else,"  sinks  the  individual 
wish  out  of  sight  and  substitutes  that  of  the  person  or 
persons  represented. 

It  will  be  immediately  recognized  that  these  three 
forms  of  activity,  the  will,  the  understanding  and  the 
act,  are  of  equal  importance,  mutually  supplemental  and 


THE  TRINE  33 

tantamount  as  to  significance.  For  the  man  who  wants 
to  build  and  does  not  know  how  will  not  produce  any- 
thing. The  man  who  knows  how  and  does  not  want  to 
build  will  produce  nothing;  and  the  man  who  can  fur- 
nish the  muscle  for  building,  but  neither  knows  how  nor 
wants  too,  is  equally  unproductive.  It  is  the  combination 
of  the  three  possibilities,  here  called  "will,  understand- 
ing and  act,"  which  finally  accomplishes  the  work. 

Now,  transfer  this  to  the  trine  of  governmental  forms 
or  functions  and  you  will  readily  note  that  the  legislative 
branch  of  the  work  is  designed  to  be  the  representation 
of  the  "will"  of  the  people;  that  the  judiciary  is  the 
representative  of  the  "understanding"  of  the  people, 
and  that  the  executive  is  the  method  of  carrying  out 
the  combined  will  and  understanding  of  the  people.  It 
will  now  appear  why  the  terms  "will,"  "understanding" 
and  "act"  have  here  been  used.  The  man  who  goes  to 
the  Legislature  represents  the  "will"  of  the  people.  The 
man  on  the  Bench,  also  representing  the  people,  repre- 
sents more  directly  their  best  "understanding  of  the  law" 
which  the  legislator  has  made,  and  the  executive  repre- 
sents the  people  in  their  effort  to  carry  out  that  which 
they  want  done  and  have  in  council  and  conference 
thought  out. 

It  is  in  the  light  of  this  interpretation  that  the  "legis- 
lative" branch  of  the  governmental  function  will  be  con- 
sidered in  the  next  chapter. 


34  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  LEGISLATIVE  FUNCTION  OF  GOVERNMENT ITS  VARI- 
OUS FORMS  AND  ITS  STRONG  AND  WEAK  POINTS. 

THE  American  people  have  decided,  from  the  very 
inception  of  government,  upon  the  representa- 
tive form  of  government.  They  have  decided 
against  the  monarchic  form.  It  will  be  recalled  that  the 
two  forms  of  government  are  the  monarchic  and  the  re- 
publican. The  former  is  a  form  in  which  all  power  is 
vested  in  the  hands  of  one  man  or  of  one  body  of  men, 
over  whom  the  people  have  no  control.  The  latter  is  a 
form  in  which  the  people  choose  men  to  represent  them 
and  to  execute  their  wishes,  and  over  whom  they  retain 
control. 

Let  us  now  take  up  the  representative  aspect  of  our 
government,  as  we  have  it  in  the  legislative  function — 
in  that  function  which  distinctively  is  to  stand  for  the 
"will"  of  the  people,  as  indicated  in  the  last  chapter. 

We  have  gradually  evolved  four  forms  of  this  par- 
ticular function  of  government.  One  for  the  town  or 
city,  one  for  the  county,  one  for  the  State  and  one  for 
the  Nation.  To  those  who  are  interested  in  this  gradual 
unf oldment  of  "Duality,  Trinity  and  Quaternity"  it  may 
be  useful  to  say  that,  as  applied  to  civics,  duality  holds 
for  the  "kind"  of  government,  trinity  for  the  "function" 
or  the  "functioning"  of  government,  that  is  to  say,  its 
method  of  being  carried  forward,  while  quaternity  or 
f ourfoldness  applies  to  the  geographic — as  also  historic 
— application  of  government.  Thus  there  are  two  gen- 


LEGISLATION  35 

eral  forms  of  government,  the  "one"  form  (monarchic) 
and  the  "all"  form  (republican,  popular,  democratic). 

There  are  three  functions  of  government — "will,  un- 
derstanding and  act,"  or  "legislative,  judicial  and  execu- 
tive," and  there  are  four  general  divisions  in  which  this 
function  can  be  and  is  to  be  applied,  namely,  city,  county, 
State  and  Nation.  If  the  student  will  hold  these  divisions 
of  the  general  subject  well  in  mind,  he  will  find  himself 
very  readily  able  to  decide  many  questions  which  other- 
wise will  be  confused  or  uncertain  in  his  mind.  Thus,  if 
he  chooses  to  make  the  experiment,  he  can  during  any 
session  of  a  Legislature  take  up  a  dozen  or  two  of  the 
bills  presented,  and  readily  see  which  of  them  apply  to 
the  city,  which  to  the  county,  which  to  the  State  and 
which  to  the  Nation,  and  gradually  begin  work  upon 
the  general  proposition  that  the  State  Legislature  should 
pass  State  laws,  not  city  laws,  not  county  laws  and  not 
National  laws.  Its  business  must  be,  and  will  presently 
be,  distinctly  confined  to  the  production,  passage  and  en- 
forcement of  State  laws.  And  so  long  as  this  is  not 
done,  the  intense  and  exceedingly  unsatisfactory  display 
of  useless  energy  will  continue. 

In  the  city,  town,  borough  (and  in  the  hybrid  thing 
called  "township,"  which  is  virtually  a  miniature  form 
of  county  and  readily  disposable  under  county  ideas),  we 
have  decided  to  call  the  legislative  body  a  "council."  In 
some  cases  we  have  divided  this  council  into  two  houses, 
like  we  do  the  Legislature  and  Congress.  When  this  is 
done  we  call  the  upper  house  the  "Select  Council,"  and 
the  lower  house  the  "Common  Council."  Otherwise  the 
word  "council"  is  sufficient  for  all  purposes  of  identifica- 
tion, for  which  purpose  alone  names  are,  or  should  be, 
used. 

In  the  county  we  have  decided  to  call  the  legislative 


36  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

body  the  "Board  of  Chosen  Freeholders"— "Freehold- 
ers" because  they  are  supposed  to  be  men  holding  prop- 
erty, as  distinguished  from  men  held  as  property,  name- 
ly, slaves,  a  condition  prevailing  at  the  time  when  the 
name  was  devised;  "Chosen"  because  they  were  selected 
by  the  people,  and  not  appointed.  This  idea  of  "choice" 
is  in  some  places  also  expressed  by  the  term  "selectmen." 

In  the  State  we  have  decided  to  create  a  "Legislature" 
which  shall  consist  of  two  houses,  an  upper  house,  called 
the  "Senate,"  and  a  lower  house,  called  the  "General  As- 
sembly." The  men  chosen  for  the  former  are  called 
"Senators,"  those  chosen  for  the  latter  usually  "Assem- 
blymen." 

In  the  nation  we  have  decided  to  follow  exactly  the 
same  form,  calling  the  entire  body  "Congress,"  the  up- 
per house  "Senate,"  as  we  do  in  the  case  of  the  State, 
and  the  lower  house  "The  House  of  Representatives." 

We  choose  people  for  these  places  by  the  same  method. 

Where  there  are  two  houses  we  limit  the  representation 
of  the  upper  house  to  a  definite  number,  while  we  choose 
the  lower  house  proportionately  to  the  number  of  inhabi- 
tants of  the  district  represented.  Thus  in  the  United 
States  Senate  we  admit  two  Senators  from  each  State. 
In  the  State  Senate  of  New  Jersey  we  admit  one  Senator 
from  each  county,  elected  by  the  people  of  that  county 
for  three  years.  While  we  send  to  either  Legislature  a 
variable  number  of  men  from  States  or  counties,  accord- 
ing to  population,  so  far  as  the  lower  house  is  concerned. 
Thus  in  the  State  of  New  Jersey  each  county  sends  its 
representatives  upon  the  basis  of  the  population  at  the 
last  census  with  readjustments  after  the  taking  of  each 
census.  Readjustments  are  made  by  the  Legislature  at 
the  session  next  after  the  publication  of  the  census,  and 


LEGISLATION  37 

no  county  is  permitted  to  have  less  than  one  or  more  than 
sixty  representatives. 

In  the  case  of  the  Board  of  Chosen  Freeholders,  and 
of  the  City  Council,  the  "upper  and  lower  house"  idea 
is  so  infrequently  employed  as  to  be  a  negligible  quan- 
tity. In  both  cases  we  elect  according  to  certain  ele- 
ments of  districting,  such  as  wards  and  districts,  and  ap- 
proximately according  to  population  values,  although 
the  lines  grow  dim  in  some  cases  and  are  "gerryman- 
dered" unmercifully  in  others. 

In  all  these  matters  and  in  a  close  study  of  them  we 
must  admit  as  our  major  premise  the  general  undertone 
of  American  life,  namely,  its  "crudeness,"  its  haphaz- 
ardness,  its  general  tendency  to  be  "just  growed,"  like 
Topsy.  This  is  not  a  serious  reproach.  A  country  as 
new  as  America,  with  vast  territories  still  thinly  popu- 
lated and  with  others  enormously  and  disproportionately 
thronged,  can  do  much  and  has  much  still  left  to  be  done 
in  the  way  of  regulation  of  growth.  Just  now  we  are  all 
growth.  Walk  the  streets  of  any  great  city  and  note  the 
lack  of  forethought  in  its  work.  The  city  puts  down  a 
street  and  then  tears  it  up  to  put  down  gas.  Then  it  puts 
down  the  street  again  and  then  it  tears  it  up  again  to 
put  in  water.  Then  it  puts  down  the  street  again,  and 
then  tears  it  up  again  to  put  in  conduits  for  electricity. 
And  so  the  process  goes  on,  without  sufficient  premedi- 
tation, without  forethought.  A  few  of  our  cities  have 
just  begun  to  wake  up  to  the  possibility  of  forethought 
in  municipal  matters.  Thus  far,  Washington  is  the  only 
city  we  have  in  which  somebody  thought  out  the  city  first 
and  built  it  afterward. 

Everywhere  else  we  built  first  and  thought  it  out 
afterward.  And  nobly  as  we  may  in  this  city  or  that 
be  taking  up  the  thought  of  municipal  improvement, 


38  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

the  general  trend  is  to  do  first  and  to  think  afterward, 
because  of  the  absolutely  unlimited  supply  of  nervous 
energy  characteristic  of  the  people  of  America.  Some 
day  we  will  think  things  over  first  and  do  them  after- 
ward. They  are  prettier,  better  and  more  useful  when 
they  are  so  done.  Thus  we  grow,  forcefully  but 
thoughtlessly.  Hence  the  skyscraper  defies  a  skyline 
and  is  inartistic,  tremendous,  gigantic,  inharmonious, 
blatantly  individualistic.  Hence  the  man  who  builds 
alongside  of  an  eleven-story  scraper  simply  builds  a 
seventeen-story  one  preliminary  to  his  neighbor  putting 
up  a  twejity-three-story  one.  It  is  simply  a  question 
of  getting  up  higher  into  the  air  with  each  building 
and  housing  a  larger  section  of  the  human  ants  who 
march  in  endless  procession  downtownward  every  morn- 
ing and  back  in  the  evening.  We  are  building  hives 
and  we  know  it,  and  we  care  little  how  they  look  or 
what  the  general  sense  of  utility  and  beauty  may  have 
to  say  about  it. 

So  with  our  legislation.  We  put  in  bills  and  bills  and 
bills,  and  then  rush  around  and  hustle  about  and  have 
hearings  and  meetings  and  sessions  and  pass  them  or 
vote  them  down  or  smother  them  in  committee,  and 
when  they  are  all  passed  they  are  usually  an  undigested 
mass,  of  which  few  people  can  make  sense  and  which  are 
about  as  corduroy  as  anything  sane  folk  can  produce. 

But  at  any  rate  we  elect  men  to  the  Legislature.  Fair- 
ly or  unfairly  do  we  elect  them.  I  know  of  no  people 
as  good-natured,  as  boisterously  unfair  and  as  brutally 
frank  about  that  unfairness  as  the  American  people.  We 
all  know  that  there  is  about  every  election,  large  and 
small,  an  element  of  purchase  and  of  bribery  which  is 
distressing  because  it  is  disgusting.  There  are  blocks 
of  votes  bought  at  every  election ;  there  is  incessant  bri- 


LEGISLATION  39 

bery  in  more  or  less  obscure  form.  Sometimes  people 
stand  about  the  polls  waiting  to  be  bought;  sometimes 
a  man  is  bribed  in  a  most  delicate  and  elaborate  way — 
a  receipted  bill  comes  his  way ;  no  bill  is  sent  him  for  this 
or  that  commodity — he  loses  trade  if  he  votes  or  says 
he  is  going  to  vote  this  way  or  that — or  in  the  other  case 
a  courtesy  is  extended  to  him  in  the  form  of  a  pass.  In 
such  instances  nobody  says  "buy"  or  "pay"  but  the 
naming  of  the  transaction  does  not  alter  its  nature.  I 
may  speak  of  a  woman  as  "handsomely  dressed"  or 
"gorgeously  arrayed"  or  "dyked  out  swell"  and  mean 
exactly  the  same  thing.  I  may  speak  of  James  Mon- 
tague as  a  "cultured  gentleman"  or  as  "James  is  a 
good  fellow,"  or  as  "what's  the  matter  with  Monty.  He's 
all  right,"  and  always  mean  the  same  thing.  So,  in 
elections,  there  are  varieties  of  ways  of  obtaining  re- 
sults; by  direct  and  brazen  purchase,  by  false  registra- 
tion and  the  voting  of  floaters  in  several  districts  during 
the  day,  by  quiet  innuendo,  by  indirection  of  this,  that 
or  the  other  kind.  But  they  are  all  the  same.  They  de- 
stroy the  value  of  the  honest  man's  vote.  But  again 
American  energy  and  American  "good  humor"  smile  at 
the  thing  and  pass  it  by.  It  may  be  that  we  are  on  the 
threshold  of  some  sweeping  changes  in  this  matter.  I 
sincerely  trust  that  we  may  be.  For  it  is  trying  to  con- 
tinue a  farce  indefinitely  and  speak  of  it  in  seriousness 
or  mistake  it  for  a  drama  or  a  problem  play.  But,  fairly 
or  unfairly,  we  elect  these  men  to  their  various  places. 

And  when  they  are  chosen  and  have  taken  their  places, 
the  huge  or  minute  mechanism  of  legislation  is  put  in 
motion.  In  the  city  the  Common  Council  passes  "ordi- 
nances." The  sources  of  these  ordinances,  which  are  in- 
tended to  regulate  the  affairs  of  the  city,  are  generally 
located  in  the  midst  of  the  group  called  "the  people," 


40  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

the  "citizens,"  the  "taxpayers."  A  need  is  felt  and  ex- 
pressed, sometimes  by  an  individual,  sometimes  by  a 
group  of  people.  There  are  too  many  stray  and  own- 
erless dogs  in  the  streets — householders  do  not  cover 
their  garbage  cans,  people  throw  paper  about  in  the 
streets ;  there  is  not  sufficient  water  pressure  for  fire  pur- 
poses in  high  places ;  some  one  is  doing  illegal  trafficking 
in  drink,  in  cards,  in  horses,  in  women;  something  is 
going  wrong.  Some  one  takes  cognizance  of  that  wrong 
and  makes  a  note  of  it.  He  collects  a  few  friends  or 
neighbors  about  him  and  forms  an  organization,  if  the 
thing  be  long  continued,  and  this  organization  brings 
the  matter  before  the  council,  or  he  lodges  the  complaint 
individually.  That  is,  he  speaks  to  the  councilman  (al- 
derman) from  his  district  (ward,  section)  and  tells  him 
to  introduce  the  matter  in  council.  If  it  be  a  slight  mat- 
ter council  draws  up  an  ordinance  covering  it. 

If  it  be  an  important  matter  council  calls  public  meet- 
ings and  hears  the  pros  and  cons  which  citizens  have  to 
bring  up  on  the  proposition  before  the  body.  If  the  city 
be  honestly  run  these  hearings  will  be  fair.  If  it  be  dis- 
honestly run  they  will  be  a  single  act  comedy.  If  the 
thing  asked  for  involve  any  large  moneyed  interests; 
if  it  refer  to  the  permission  granted  to  a  corporation  to 
lay  tracks,  to  sell  light,  heat,  power,  water,  or  what  not ; 
if  it  refer  to  some  interest  involving  the  railroad  corpo- 
rations; some  change  of  grade;  some  building  enter- 
prise, like  a  railroad  station;  some  change  in  schedule 
time,  and  a  stoppage  of  fast  trains  where  such  trains  do 
not  otherwise  stop  (in  a  thousand  and  one  ways  may 
corporations  be  involved),  their  business  sense  in  such 
cases  will  tell  them  whether  the  thing  advocated  be  favor- 
able to  them  or  not.  If  not,  they  will  oppose  it.  This 
they  will  do  openly  and  fairly,  if  the  corporation  con- 


LEGISLATION  41 

sists  of  a  majority  of  men  whose  individual  conscience 
is  sufficiently  strong  to  constitute  a  conscience  for  the 
group,  or  corporation — unfairly  and  dishonestly  if  the 
group  of  conscientious  men  be  too  small  to  furnish  such 
an  aggregate  conscience. 

In  the  latter  case,  legislation  will  be  corruptly  op- 
posed. The  symptoms  of  this  kind  of  influence,  if  un- 
derhand, are  very  legible  in  the  "signs  of  the  times," 
and  can  be  readily  diagnosed  by  the  civic  worker,  by 
the  student  of  human  nature,  by  the  man  learned  in  the 
deeper  laws  of  social  economy,  which  explain  the  per- 
sonal equation.  There  will  be  delays;  there  will  be  un- 
necessary absences  on  the  part  of  certain  councilmen — • 
it  will  be  difficult  to  get  the  committee  together,  to  whom 
the  matter  was  referred — there  will  be  sudden  and  un- 
expected building  operations,  or  purchases  of  things 
on  the  part  of  this  or  that  councilman,  which  are  out  of 
proportion  with  the  assessed  valuation  of  that  person's 
"personal  property"  on  the  assessors'  books.  A  variety 
of  symptoms  put  in  an  appearance,  which  are  very  read- 
ily diagnosed.  To  prevent  this  and  to  expose  council- 
men  to  no  temptations  which  they  will  be  unable  unaided 
to  resist,  it  is  well  for  civic  bodies  in  a  municipality  (in 
large  cities,  in  a  ward)  to  anticipate  the  things  which 
will  probably  transpire  during  the  ensuing  year,  and, 
by  asking  questions  of  the  candidates  for  office,  put  them 
upon  record  as  to  what  they  will  stand  for.  The  pres- 
ence, however,  of  citizens  at  meetings  of  council  and 
ordinary  and  courteous  interest  shown  in  things  which 
happen  will  remedy  many  things  and  serve  as  a  prophy- 
lactic against  any  epidemic  of  dishonesty,  such  as  has 
been  noted  and  antagonized  in  large  cities  like  Philadel- 
phia, St.  Louis  and  other  places,  which  have  of  late  fur- 


42  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

nished  headlines  for  the  newspapers,  in  which  the  word 
"graft"  was  much  in  evidence. 

Enlarge  this  picture  for  a  State  and  National  Legis- 
lature and  you  have  all  the  outlines  needed  for  an  in- 
telligent apperception  of  the  larger  function,  whether 
it  be  that  of  the  county,  of  the  State  or  of  the  Nation. 
The  Board  of  Chosen  Freeholders,  the  House  of  Assem- 
bly and  the  House  of  Representatives  are  simply  larger 
bodies,  built  upon  the  same  principle,  and,  therefore, 
perfectly  intelligible  along  the  lines  here  laid  down. 


THE    SENATE  43 


CHAPTER  V 

THE    UNITED    STATES    SENATE    AND    WHY    CORPORATE    IN- 
TERESTS APPEAL  MOST  NATURALLY  TO  THIS  BODY. 

IN  facing  the  problems  which  the  element  of  legisla- 
tion presents,  the  citizen  most  naturally  takes  up 
first  the  most  prominent  body    representing    that 
function,  namely,  the  Senate  of  the  United  States.  This 
body  faces  two  kinds  of  problems,  namely,  the  prob- 
lem of  the  aristocracy  (plutocracy,  if  you  prefer,  for 
America),  and  the  problem  of  interstate  polity.    Let  us 
consider  these  two  features  in  their  order. 

First,  take  the  problem  of  aristocracy.  The  attention 
of  the  student  of  civic  affairs  is  early  called  to  the  fact 
that  the  United  States  Senate  represents  the  aristocracy 
just  as  faithfully  as  does  the  House  of  Lords  the  aris- 
tocracy of  England,  or  as  did  the  Roman  Senate  that  of 
Rome.  The  student  who  tries  to  investigate  a  fact  or  a 
series  of  facts,  without  starting  with  a  perfectly  candid 
premise,  will  find  the  final  results  of  his  studies  as  far 
wrong  as  his  premise  was  wrong.  It  is,  of  course,  as- 
sumed, in  a  government  like  ours,  that  we  are  all  free 
and  equal  and  that  consequently  a  United  States  Senator 
stands  on  exactly  the  same  level  as  a  Representative  at 
Washington,  or  as  a  sheriff  in  a  county,  or  as  any  pri- 
vate citizen.  This  conception  is  derived  from  the 
thought  that  "free  and  equal"  means  "alike  and  on  the 
same  level,"  which  it  does  not  mean.  Free  means,  equally 
poised  between  two  equivalent  forces,  and  equal  means 
equal  before  the  law.  It  does  not  mean  that,  in  order  to 


44  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

be  free,  a  man  may  do  as  he  pleases.  Such  a  condition 
does  not  exist. 

To  think  that  a  man  is  free  to  do  as  he  pleases  is 
absurd.  Suppose  some  headstrong  man  should  decide 
that  he  will  not  breathe  air,  or  that  he  will  eat  no  more 
food,  or  that  he  will  do  entirely  without  sleep,  or  that 
he  will  touch  a  live  wire  with  his  bare  hand,  or  that  he 
may  eat  all  the  arsenic  or  strychnine  he  pleases — he  will 
soon  find  that  there  is  an  endless  array  of  things  which 
he  cannot  do  at  all  and  continue  as  a  physical  entity.  So, 
too,  he  will  find  that  there  is  a  whole  array  of  things 
which  he  cannot  do  and  continue  as  a  civic  entity.  He 
cannot  with  impunity  kill  his  neighbor,  steal  from  his 
neighbor,  or  in  fact,  break  any  of  the  seven  last  com- 
mandments and  not  cease  to  be  a  civic  entity.  In  fact, 
society  will  immediately  set  all  kinds  of  machinery  in 
motion  to  deprive  him  either  temporarily  or  permanently 
of  his  citizenship  if  he  tries  this  form  of  "freedom."  In 
the  same  way  no  two  men  are  equal  as  to  faculties,  as  to 
talent,  as  to  ability,  as  to  opportunity.  The  only  way 
in  which  a  civic  document,  a  Constitution  of  the  United 
States,  for  instance,  can  assure  men  equality,  is  that 
they  shall  have  (or  should  have)  equality  before  the  law; 
that  no  law  shall  be  created,  enforced  or  tolerated  in 
which  one  man  is  discriminated  against,  or  in  which  his 
fellow  is  given  an  undue  advantage.  If  the  student  will 
remove  permanently  from  his  mind  any  other  interpre- 
tation of  "free  and  equal"  which  he  may  have  held,  he 
will  face  any  problem  in  civics,  with  better  facilities  for 
its  solution  than  would  otherwise  be  the  case. 

Now,  in  the  natural  order  of  things,  society  divides 
itself  either  naturally  or  artificially  into  two  huge  ag- 
gregates. In  some  countries  these  two  antithetical 
bodies  are  called  the  aristocracy  and  the  people.  In 


THE    SENATE  45 

such  countries,  as  for  instance  in  England,  the  House 
of  Commons  represents  the  people  and  the  House  of 
Lords  the  aristocracy.  In  the  United  States,  where  we 
have  decided  to  discontinue  the  national  function  called 
"the  aristocracy,"  we  have  divided  into  two  classes, 
called  by  various  names,  but  most  commonly  known, 
"capital"  and  "labor."  This  nomenclature  is  not  very 
satisfactory,  and  the  student  is  counseled  not  to  confine 
himself  to  it.  Other  names  which  are  given  to  these  two 
great  classes  are  "the  rich"  and  "the  poor,"  "the  Con- 
servatives" and  "the  Liberals,"  "the  plutocracy  and  the 
proletariat,"  but  in  either  case  we  mean  a  division  into 
the  employer  and  the  employed,  brain  and  brawn,  the 
thinker  and  the  worker,  the  organizer  and  the  organized. 
Both  these  classes  are  American  citizens  and  have  a  right 
to  representation.  It  is  natural  that  the  class  called  "the 
interests"  should  turn  to  the  United  States  Senate  for 
representation,  while  the  other  class,  those  who  stand  for 
work,  for  labor,  for  the  "common  people,"  should  turn  to 
the  House  of  Representatives  for  that  same  purpose. 
When  the  Roman  (as  also  the  English)  form  of  bicam- 
eral legislature  was  adopted,  Washington,  Jefferson, 
Madison  and  the  men  most  directly  concerned  in  the  up- 
building of  the  structure,  adopted  the  "two-house"  form, 
because  they  thought  it  would  be  the  best  thing  to  do. 
They  likened  it  to  a  cup  and  saucer.  That  your  tea 
would  be  too  hot  to  drink  from  the  cup,  it  might  be  well 
to  pour  it  into  the  saucer  to  cool  it.  That  if  things  are 
deliberated  by  two  houses  there  would  be  no  rash  action. 
They  would  be  more  thoroughly  considered. 

This  is  perfectly  true  and  was  doubtless  the  thing 
which  consciously  appealed  to  that  long  line  of  noble 
men  beginning  in  Washington  and  deteriorating  into 
Stonewall  Jackson.  But  subconsciously,  I  suspect,  there 


46  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

was  a  desire  to  meet  the  demands  of  the  two  great  classes 
represented  in  the  situation,  as  they  had  to  face  it,  name- 
ly the  Royalist  and  the  Republican.  For  these  men  knew 
that  there  were  two  classes  of  people  in  America  at  that 
time — men  and  women  who  felt  that  they  must  be  loyal 
to  King  George  and  other  men  and  women  who  felt  that 
they  must  be  loyal  to  the  sense  of  freedom  which  weighed 
upon  their  convictions.  And  so  they  created,  unwitting- 
ly, a  replica  of  the  House  of  Lords  and  called  it  the  Sen- 
ate, and  another  of  the  House  of  Commons  and  called  it 
the  House  of  Representatives.  In  both  cases  they  acted 
more  wisely  than  they  thought  and  builded  better  than 
they  knew,  for,  as  was  said  above,  both  classes  of  Amer- 
ican citizens  are  entitled  to  representation,  and  if  we  can 
ask  a  leisure  class  to  form  a  Senate  for  us  at  a  nominal 
compensation  and  with  a  direct  appeal  to  citizenship  and 
its  obligations,  we  have  a  right  to  do  so,  and  if  we  can 
create  another  house,  with  a  similar  appeal  but  a  lesser 
term  of  responsibility  and  a  comparatively  more  indirect 
appeal  to  citizenship,  we  have  a  right  to  do  that. 

Unwittingly  the  Roman  idea  of  the  Senate  lies  at  the 
bottom  of  the  creation  of  the  United  States  Senate,  name- 
ly, that  it  shall  be  constituted,  as  far  as  possible,  of  the 
leisure  class,  of  those  whose  circumstances  are  such  as  to 
warrant  a  demand  on  the  part  of  their  country  upon 
their  time  and  talents,  without  adequate  compensation — 
adequate  in  comparison  with  the  wealth  which  is  supposed 
to  be  theirs.  In  Rome  it  was  an  unwritten  law,  which 
held  throughout  the  Republican  days,  that  the  Senators 
should  be  chosen  of  the  elders  or  patricians,  and  there  was 
probably  never  a  man  on  the  "Patrician  Consulate,"  as 
the  Senate  was  first  called,  whose  property  valuation  in 
the  tax  lists  was  less  than  100,000  "as"  (the  Roman 
coin  for  unital  measurement)  while  toward  the  middle  of 


THE    SENATE  47 

the  Republican  period  there  emerged  the  "Comitia  Tri- 
buta,"  as  a  successor  of  the  "Comitia  Centuriata."  This, 
to  all  intents  and  purposes,  was  the  equivalent  of  our 
House  of  Representatives,  the  representation  being  for 
the  "populus,"  later,  in  the  days  of  the  degeneration, 
called  the  "plebs,"  with  a  contemptuous  meaning  of  "the 
herd."  In  the  days  of  the  degeneration,  this  arrange- 
ment of  the  "upper  class"  representation  by  the  Senate 
and  "lower  class"  representation  by  the  House  or  the 
Comitia  (Assembly)  became  the  source  of  revolution.  The 
masses  rose  against  the  evident  injustice  done  them  by  the 
"vested  interests."  No  student  can  read  the  story  of 
Jugurtha,  of  Marius,  Sulla  and  Pompeius  Strabo  (  father 
of  the  "great"  Pompey)  without  realizing  that  the  piv- 
otal centre  of  all  disturbances,  of  the  riotous  times  which 
ended  the  republic,  lay  in  a  debauched  Senate,  a  Senate 
which  sold  its  birthright  for  money,  for  advantage,  for 
personal  distinction,  for  the  influence,  gained  from  the 
position  as  Senator  and  used  for  private  ends  and  for  the 
accumulation  of  enormous  fortunes  and  agrarian  posses- 
sions, for  the  elimination  of  which  the  Gracchi  fought 
and  died. 

The  Roman  people  rose  against  the  Senate  and  over- 
threw it  and  the  republic  because  it  could  find  no  way  out 
of  representing  private  interests  and  vested  rights,  even 
to  the  disadvantage  and  detriment  of  the  interests  of 
the  people  at  large.  The  English  people  grow  more  and 
more  imperative  in  their  demand  for  the  abolishment  of 
the  House  of  Lords  for  the  same  reason.  Recent  devel- 
opments under  the  elaboration  of  Campbell-Bannerman 
and  Birrell  have  reawakened  the  old  cry.  Both  move- 
ments show  the  direction  in  which  lies  the  remedy  for 
this  condition.  It  lies  in  the  direction  of  the  popular 
vote  for  United  States  Senator.  Let  the  people  at  large 


48  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

choose  their  Senator,  as  they  choose  their  Representative. 
They  will  be  wise  enough  to  still  maintain  the  perfectly 
legitimate  idea,  that  the  Senate  should  represent  that 
class  of  Americans  which  stands  for  "vested  rights," 
while  the  people  will  retain  their  hold  upon  a  set  of  reins 
which  have  thus  far  slipped  from  their  fingers. 

That  "vested  interests"  have  had  control  of  the  Senate 
to  its  detriment,  aye,  to  the  edge  of  its  undoing,  need 
not  here  be  elaborated.  The  reader  can  find  all  he  needs 
upon  that  point  in  almost  every  current  magazine,  from 
the  most  conservative  to  the  most  radical.  I  need  only 
repeat  here  the  admonition  to  the  citizen,  that  he  ad- 
vance the  cause  of  direct  vote  for  United  States  Senator, 
by  such  means  and  by  such  legislative  measures  as  he 
thinks  will  accomplish  that  result,  and  that  he  prepare  to 
think  out  the  same  line  of  activity  and  legislation  for  a 
change  which  we  shall  presently  have  to  make  a  little 
higher  up,  namely,  the  abolishment  of  the  Electoral  Col- 
lege. Both  these  functions  have  been  interruptions  in 
the  orderly  progression  of  American  methods  of  selec- 
tion. We  elect  the  head  of  our  town,  we  elect  the  head 
of  our  county,  we  elect  the  head  of  our  State,  but  we  do 
not  elect  the  head  of  our  Nation.  He  is  elected  for  us  by 
an  obsolete  piece  of  mechanism,  academically  devised  at 
one  time,  and  called  an  Electoral  College.  So,  we  elect 
our  councilors  in  the  city,  we  elect  our  Board  of  Free- 
holders in  the  county,  we  elect  our  Legislature  in  the 
State,  but  we  do  not  elect  the  men  who  are  to  represent  us 
in  Washington.  In  both  cases  we  have  a  break  in  the 
legitimate  order  of  things,  which  will  sooner  or  later  re- 
act and  has  already  reacted  to  our  disadvantage.  Let 
there  be  immediately  a  direct  election  of  United  States 
Senators,  and  presently,  as  soon  as  feasible,  a  direct 


THE    SENATE  49 

election  of  the  President  of  the  United  States  by  the  abol- 
ishment of  the  Electoral  College. 

As  to  the  second  point,  interstate  polity,  the  difficulties 
in  the  way  of  the  United  States  Senate  are  many  and 
growing  more  numerous  and  more  serious.  Recently  we 
had  the  question  of  the  seating  or  unseating  of  Senator 
Reed  Smoot,  because  the  Senate  did  not  know  how  far 
the  rights  of  the  State  of  Utah  go  and  how  far  Federal 
rights  go.  The  women  of  the  country  were  aroused  be- 
cause Mr.  Smoot,  to  them,  stood  for  polygamy,  and  they 
did  not  want  such  a  thing  represented  in  the  United 
States  Senate.  The  Senate  hedged.  It  could  do  nothing 
but  hedge.  It  did  not  know;  consequently  it  could  not 
decide.  It  dallies  with  the  proposition  until  Mr.  Smoot's 
time  expires,  and  then — why  then  there  is  no  answer. 
Dalliance,  even  if  carried  forward  by  Senatorial  courtesy, 
is  no  answer  to  a  direct  question  put  to  the  Senate  by  the 
women  of  the  country. 

Japan  asked  the  Senate  a  warship-shadowed  question 
as  to  the  exclusion  of  Mongol  children  from  the  schools 
of  San  Francisco.  No  one  was  seriously  frightened,  but 
the  Senate  had  no  answer  to  the  question  at  hand,  be- 
cause it  did  not  know,  and  does  not  know,  how  far  the 
rights  of  the  State  of  California  extend,  and  how  far  the 
Federal  rights  of  the  government  go.  Men  spend  futile 
time  in  answering  subsidiary  questions  so  long  as  this 
question  of  "State  Rights"  is  not  answered,  and  the  ques- 
tion of  State  Rights  will  not  be  answered  so  long  as  local 
Legislatures  have  not  answered  the  question  of  home  rule 
or  local  option  for  such  sections  in  States  as  are  repre- 
sented by  counties,  townships  and  cities.  No  scholar  can 
do  a  large  and  complicated  example  who  is  unable  to 
solve  a  small  and  uncomplicated  one.  The  Senate  will 
have  no  answer  to  the  question  until  there  be  answers 


50  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

forthcoming  from  single  States  on  the  proposition  of 
where  the  rights  of  the  State  end  and  the  rights  of  the 
county  or  city  begin. 

At  the  bottom  of  dozens  of  questions  and  problems,  at 
the  bottom  of  the  creation  of  the  Interstate  Commerce 
Commission,  at  the  bottom  of  railroad  rate  regulation,  at 
the  bottom  of  all  questions  involving  or  foreshadowing 
Federal  control,  lies  the  question  of  State  Rights.  And  if 
the  next  session  of  the  Senate  could  be  devoted  to  the  con- 
sideration of  the  fundamentals  of  this  proposition,  the 
result  would  be  helpful  in  the  solution  of  a  multitude  of 
problems  now  pending  for  solution. 

For  the  establishment  of  intelligent  and  practical  citi- 
zenship we  need  a  careful  study  of  that  aspect  of  things, 
which  may  be  designated  "differentiated  or  discrete  de- 
grees"— the  study  of  the  boundary  lines  of  human  forces, 
an  investigation  of  how  far  the  rights  of  a  corporate  en- 
tity of  any  kind,  whether  it  be  a  municipality,  a  county, 
a  State,  a  nation,  or  whether  it  be  a  corporate  entity  cre- 
ated under  the  laws  of  a  State  of  the  Union,  extend.  And 
when  that  has  been  achieved  we  will  have  advanced  far 
toward  the  solution  of  many  vexing  and  vexed  problems. 


HOUSE  OF  REPRESENTATIVES    51 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE    HOUSE    OF    REPRESENTATIVES    CONSIDERED     IN     CON- 
NECTION WITH  STATE  RIGHTS  AND  STATE  INTERESTS. 

USUALLY  we  think  of  the  line  of  demarkation  be- 
tween men  of  different  political  attitude  as  being 
that  of  the  party  line.     We  think  of  the  House 
as  largely  Republican,  say,  and  the  Senate  as  largely 
Democratic,  or  vice  versa. 

This  differentiation,  however,  is  not  inherent  in  the 
nature  of  the  case.  It  arises  from  political  exigency, 
since  it  is  evident  that  there  are  good,  bad  and  indiffer- 
ent men  in  both  parties,  or  in  any  number  of  parties. 
The  inherent  difference  between  the  two  bodies  is  that  in- 
dicated in  the  previous  chapter,  namely,  that  the  Senate 
naturally  represents  "corporate  interests,  or  vested  in- 
terests," or  the  larger  bodies  of  social,  commercial  and 
financial  life,  without  which  no  nation  can  exist,  while 
the  House  represents  the  great  mass  of  the  people,  as 
contradistinguished  from  these  smaller  groups.  This  is 
inherent  in  the  nature  of  the  case. 

It  is  not,  however,  the  logical  and,  therefore,  abstract 
basis  of  representation.  In  fact,  it  is  the  very  opposite  to 
that  basis.  If  such  matters  could  be  decided  upon  their 
abstract  or  intrinsic  merits,  then  would  the  relation  be- 
tween House  and  Senate  be  quite  different  from  that  now 
inherent  in  the  proposition.  For  the  relationship  would 
shape  itself  upon  every  question  that  arises  in  this  way. 
In  every  question,  more  or  less  prominently  expressed,  the 
rights  of  individual  States  and  the  right  of  the  Federal 


52  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

Government  are  involved.  It  would  prove  difficult  to  find 
a  question  of  importance  in  which  this  is  not  the  case. 
Take  up  any  public  utility,  such  as  coal,  lumber,  cotton, 
steel,  or  any  public  function  such  as  taxation,  transporta- 
tion, water,  riparian  rights,  and  so  forth,  and  there  is 
always  one  aspect  of  the  case  in  which  the  entire  Federal 
Government  is  involved  and  another  in  which  it  is  a  mat- 
ter of  State  rights. 

A  riparian  proposition,  for  instance,  may  be  of  no  in- 
terest whatever  to  Ohio  or  Indiana,  while  New  Jersey  or 
Maine  may  be  vitally  interested.  Coal  may  be  of  no  in- 
terest to  Connecticut,  while  Pennsylvania  and  Ohio  are 
vitally  interested.  So  with  any  and  every  proposition.  If 
in  an  abstract  way  the  relative  attitude  of  the  two  Houses 
could  be  held  in  mind  toward  such  questions,  the  Senate 
standing  for  the  Federal  side  of  the  proposition  and  the 
House  for  the  State  side  of  it,  then  there  would  be  a  foun- 
dation for  the  investigation  of  any  series  of  problems 
along  the  line  of  abstract  possibility. 

This  condition  of  things,  however,  does  not  as  yet  ob- 
tain. As  the  House  is  now  constituted,  it  concerns  itself 
largely  with  questions  of  politics,  with  only  here  and 
there  a  glimmer  of  the  vital  point,  upon  which  much  will 
presently  hinge.  If  the  question  of  State  rights  is  in 
evidence  so  far  as  the  Senate  is  concerned,  as  shown  in  the 
last  chapter,  then  that  question  is  still  more  in  evidence  so 
far  as  the  House  is  concerned,  and  the  student  of  citizen- 
ship, whether  with  a  view  to  taking  a  position  in  reference 
to  those  who  constitute  the  House  of  Representatives  or 
with  the  personally  ambitious  view  of  occupying  that  po- 
sition himself  at  some  time,  cannot  do  better  than  to  give 
most  serious  attention  to  that  one  question.  It  is  a  very 
much  more  serious  question  than  we  think  in  this  our  day. 
We  are  so  forgetful,  and  the  American  spirit  so  buoyant, 


HOUSE    OF    REPRESENTATIVES          53 

that  it  readily  forgets  what  is  by  nature  not  subject  to 
large  and  overpowering  optimism. 

It  forgets  the  Civil  War  of  the  Sixties  with  its  60,000 
dead,  its  wake  of  ruin  and  disaster,  and  calls  it  "the  late 
unpleasantness,"  forgetting  that  the  cause  of  that  war 
was  the  question  of  State  rights.  And  we  dally  with  the 
Mormon  question ;  we  play  with  the  chip  on  the  shoulder 
of  Japan ;  we  allow  men  to  get  the  hold  of  private  own- 
ership upon  coal,  upon  natural  opportunities,  upon 
which  the  welfare  of  this  or  that  State  most  directly 
depends,  and  we  do  so  with  the  utter  indifference  of  chil- 
dren who  fail  to  realize  the  import  of  what  the  things 
we  play  with  may  grow  into  before  we  are  aware  of  it. 

Let  me  remind  the  reader  of  a  few  single  items  which 
were  in  the  fifties  based  upon  little,  insignificant  events 
involving  State  rights.  We  are  all  familiar  with  the 
phrase,  the  "Dred  Scott  decision."  But  as  your  eye  rests 
upon  the  sentence  just  at  this  moment  you  will  admit  that 
you  have  forgotten  what  it  stands  for.  Let  me  quote 
from  Ridpath  just  what  it  meant.  He  says: 

"A  few  days  after  the  inauguration  of  President  James 
Buchanan  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  de- 
livered the  celebrated  opinion,  known  in  American  history 
as  the  Dred  Scott  decision.  Dred  Scott,  a  negro,  had 
been  held  as  a  slave  by  Dr.  Emerson,  of  Missouri,  a  sur- 
geon in  the  United  States  Army.  On  the  removal  of  Em- 
erson to  Rock  Island,  111.,  and  afterward,  in  1836,  to 
Fort  Snelling,  Minn.,  Scott  was  taken  along,  and  at  the 
latter  place  he  and  a  negro  woman,  who  had  been  bought 
by  the  surgeon,  were  married.  Two  children  were  born 
of  the  marriage,  and  then  the  whole  family  were  taken 
back  to  St.  Louis  and  sold.  Dred  thereupon  brought 
suit  for  his  freedom.  The  cause  was  heard  in  the  Circuit 
and  Supreme  courts  of  Missouri,  and  in  May  of  1854  was 


54  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

appealed  to  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States. 
After  a  delay  of  nearly  three  years  a  decision  was  finally 
reached  in  March  of  1857. 

"Chief  Justice  Taney,  speaking  for  the  Court,  decided 
that  negroes,  whether  free  or  slave,  were  not  citizens  of 
the  United  States,  and  that  they  could  not  become  such 
by  any  process  known  to  the  Constitution ;  that  under  the 
laws  of  the  United  States  a  negro  could  neither  sue  nor  be 
sued,  and  that,  therefore,  the  Court  had  no  jurisdiction 
of  Dred  Scott's  cause ;  that  a  slave  was  to  be  regarded  in 
the  light  of  a  personal  chattel,  and  that  he  might  be  re- 
moved from  place  to  place  by  his  owner  as  any  other  piece 
of  property;  that  the  Constitution  gave  to  every  slave- 
holder the  right  of  removing  to  or  through  any  State  or 
Territory  with  his  slaves,  and  of  returning  at  his  will 
with  them  to  a  State  where  slavery  was  recognized  by 
law;  and  that,  therefore,  the  Missouri  compromise  of 
1820,  as  well  as  the  compromise  measures  of  1850,  was 
unconstitutional  and  void. 

"In  these  opinions  six  of  the  Associate  Justices  of  the 
Supreme  Bench — Wayne,  Nelson,  Grier,  Daniel,  Camp- 
bell and  Catron — concurred,  while  two  associates — 
Judges  McLean  and  Curtis — dissented.  The  decision  of 
the  majority,  which  was  accepted  as  the  opinion  of  the 
Court,  gave  great  satisfaction  to  the  ultra  slave-holding 
sentiments  of  the  South,  but  excited  in  the  North  thou- 
sands of  indignant  comments  and  much  bitter  opposi- 
tion." 

Note  the  sentence :  "To  a  State  where  slavery  was  rec- 
ognized by  law." 

To  this  was  added  a  "Mormon  trouble,"  thus  described 
by  the  same  author: 

"In  the  first  year  of  Buchanan's  administration  there 
was  a  Mormon  rebellion  in  Utah.  The  difficulty  arose 


HOUSE    OF    REPRESENTATIVES          55 

from  an  attempt  to  extend  the  judicial  system  of  the 
United  States  over  the  Territory.  Thus  far  Brigham 
Young,  the  Mormon  Governor,  had  had  his  own  way  of 
administering  justice.  The  community  of  Mormons 
was  organized  on  a  plan  very  different  from  that  exist- 
ing in  other  Territories,  and  many  usages  had  grown  up 
in  Utah  which  were  repugnant  to  the  laws  of  the  country. 
When,  therefore,  a  Federal  Judge  was  sent  to  preside  in 
the  Territory,  he  was  resisted,  insulted  and  driven  vio- 
lently from  the  seat  of  justice. 

"The  other  officials  of  the  Federal  Government  were 
also  expelled,  and  the  Territory  became  the  scene  of  a 
reign  of  terror.  The  Mormons,  however,  attempted  a  jus- 
tification of  their  conduct  on  the  ground  that  the  charac- 
ter of  the  United  States  officers  had  been  so  low  and 
vicious  as  to  command  no  respect.  But  the  excuse  was 
deemed  insufficient,  and  Brigham  Young  was  superseded 
in  the  governorship  by  Alfred  Gumming,  superintendent 
of  Indian  affairs  on  the  Upper  Missouri.  Judge  Delana 
Eckels,  of  Indiana,  was  appointed  Chief  Justice  of  the 
Territory ;  and  an  army  of  two  thousand  five  hundred 
men  was  organized  and  dispatched  to  Utah  to  put  down 
lawlessness  by  force. 

"But  Young  and  the  Mormon  elders  were  in  no  humor 
to  give  up  their  authority  without  a  struggle.  The  ap- 
proaching American  army  was  denounced  as  a  horde  of 
barbarians,  and  preparations  were  made  for  resistance. 
In  September,  of  1857,  the  National  forces  reached  the 
Territory,  and  on  the  sixth  of  October  a  company  of 
Mormon  rangers  made  good  the  threats  of  Young  by  at- 
tacking and  destroying  most  of  the  army  supply  trains. 

"Winter  came  on,  and  the  Federal  forces,  under  com- 
mand of  Colonel  Albert  Sidney  Johnson,  were  obliged  to 
find  quarters  on  Black  Fork,  near  Fort  Bridges.  Mean- 


56  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

while,  however,  the  President  had  dispatched  Thomas  L. 
Kane,  of  Pennsylvania,  with  conciliatory  letters  to  the 
Mormons.  Going  by  way  of  California,  he  reached  Utah 
in  the  spring  of  1858,  and  in  a  short  time  succeeded  in 
bringing  about  a  good  understanding  between  Governor 
Gumming  and  the  insurgents.  In  the  latter  part  of  May, 
Governor  Powell,  of  Kentucky,  and  MajorMcCullough, 
of  Texas,  arrived  at  the  quarters  of  the  Army,  bearing 
from  the  President  (James  Buchanan)  a  proclamation  of 
pardon  to  all  who  would  submit  to  the  National  author- 
ity. The  passions  of  the  Mormons  had  by  this  time 
somewhat  subsided,  and  they  accepted  the  overtures. 

"In  the  fall  of  1858  the  Army  proceeded  to  Salt  Lake 
City,  but  was  soon  afterward  quartered  at  Camp  Floyd, 
forty  miles  distant.  The  Federal  forces  remained  at  this 
place  until  order  was  entirely  restored,  and  in  May  of 
1860  were  withdrawn  from  the  Territory." 

Again  note  that  this  was  the  Federal  Government 
against  the  State  (or  Territory)  of  Utah.  These  were 
slight  straws  to  show  the  way  in  which  the  wind  of  pas- 
sion would  presently  blow.  The  next  was  the  raid  by  John 
Brown.  It  is  thus  referred  to  by  the  same  authority: 

"From  the  beginning  the  new  administration  had 
stormy  times.  The  slavery  question  continued  to  vex  the 
Nation.  The  Dred  Scott  decision,  to  which  the  Presi- 
dent had  looked  as  a  measure  calculated  to  allay  the  ex- 
citement, had  only  added  fuel  to  the  flame.  In  some  of 
the  free  States  the  opposition  rose  so  high  that  personal 
liberty  bills  were  passed,  the  object  of  which  was  to  de- 
feat the  execution  of  the  fugitive  slave  law.  In  the  fall 
of  1859  the  excitement  was  still  further  increased  by  the 
mad  attempt  of  John  Brown,  of  Kansas,  to  excite  a  gen- 
eral insurrection  among  the  slaves. 

"With  a  party  of  twenty-one  men  as  daring  as  him- 


HOUSE    OF    REPRESENTATIVES          57 

self,  he  made  a  sudden  descent  on  the  United  States  Arse- 
nal at  Harper's  Ferry,  captured  the  place,  and  held  his 
ground  for  nearly  two  days.  The  National  troops  and 
the  militia  of  Virginia  were  called  out  in  order  to  sup- 
press the  revolt.  Thirteen  of  Brown's  men  were  killed, 
two  made  their  escape,  and  the  rest  were  captured.  The 
leader  and  his  six  companions  were  given  over  to  the 
authorities  of  Virginia,  tried,  condemned  and  hanged. 

"In  Kansas  the  old  controversy  still  continued,  but  the 
Free  Soil  party  gained  ground  so  rapidly  as  to  make  it 
certain  that  slavery  would  be  interdicted  from  the  State. 
All  these  facts  and  events  tended  to  widen  the  breach  be- 
tween the  people  of  the  North  and  the  South.  Such  was 
the  alarming  condition  of  affairs  when  the  time  arrived 
for  holding  the  nineteenth  Presidential  election." 

Incident  after  incident  gave  the  rising  tide  force,  or, 
rather,  indicated  the  force  of  the  rising  tide.  The  po- 
litical leaders  of  the  day  could  not  agree  as  to  candidates 
and  policies.  The  interests  of  the  South,  the  general 
form  of  government,  the  general  spirit  of  social  life,  dif- 
fered in  the  South  from  those  of  the  North.  Secession 
was  in  the  air.  At  first  representatives  withdrew  from  the 
political  convention.  Then  matters  culminated.  Here  is 
what  the  same  writer  says : 

"The  actual  work  of  secession  began  in  South  Caro- 
lina. On  December  17,  1860,  a  convention  assembled  at 
Charleston,  and  after  three  days  of  deliberation  passed  a 
resolution  that  the  union  hitherto  existing  between  South 
Carolina  and  the  other  States,  under  the  name  of  the  Uni- 
ted States  of  America,  was  dissolved.  It  was  a  step  of 
fearful  importance.  The  action  was  contagious.  The 
sentiment  of  disunion  spread  with  great  rapidity.  The 
cotton-growing  States  were  almost  unanimous  in  support 
of  the  measure.  By  February  1,  1861,  six  other  States — 


58  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

Mississippi,  Florida,  Alabama,  Georgia,  Louisiana  and 
Texas — had  passed  ordinances  of  secession  and  with- 
drawn from  the  Union.  Nearly  all  of  the  Senators  and 
Representatives  of  those  States,  following  the  action  of 
their  constituents,  resigned  their  seats  in  Congress  and 
gave  themselves  to  the  disunion  cause. 

"In  the  secession  conventions  there  was  but  little  op- 
position to  the  movement.  In  some  instances  a  consider- 
able minority  vote  was  cast.  A  few  of  the  speakers  bold- 
ly denounced  disunion  as  bad  in  principle  and  ruinous  in 
its  results.  The  course  of  Alexander  H.  Stephens,  after- 
ward Vice-President  of  the  Confederate  States,  was  pe- 
culiar. In  the  convention  of  Georgia  he  undertook  the 
task  of  preventing  the  secession  of  his  State.  He  deliv- 
ered a  long  and  powerful  oration  in  which  he  defended 
the  theory  of  secession,  advocated  the  doctrine  of  State 
sovereignty,  declared  his  intention  of  abiding  by  the  de- 
cision of  the  convention,  but  at  the  same  time  spoke 
against  secession,  on  the  ground  that  the  measure  was  im- 
politic, unwise,  disastrous.  Not  a  few  prominent  men 
at  the  South  held  similar  views;  but  the  opposite  opin- 
ion prevailed,  and  secession  was  accomplished." 

It  is  to  the  point  of  "State  sovereignty,"  and  to  its 
being  virtually  at  the  bottom  of  the  movement  of  seces- 
sion, that  I  desire  to  call  especial  attention. 

And  I  do  so  at  this  point,  the  more  sharply  to  empha- 
size the  two  elements  of  danger  which  are  thrown  into  the 
foreground  by  the  impulsive  nature  of  the  President  of 
the  United  States  and  by  the  concurrence  of  his  coun- 
selors. There  is  a  serious  temptation  to  make  certain 
matters  Federal  in  their  control  and  administration. 
Wherever  the  same  possibilities  arise  and  the  same  condi- 
tions prevail,  as  in  matters  of  transportation,  of  child  la- 
bor, of  divorce,  of  finance,  and  of  a  multitude  of  other 


HOUSE    OF    REPRESENTATIVES          59 

general  functions  of  the  civic,  social  and  politic  body,  this 
temptation  arises  and  grows  stronger  daily,  especially 
where  men  of  positive  character  and  unhesitating  initia- 
tive, like  President  Roosevelt,  have  charge  of  affairs. 

As  soon  as  this  cry  is  raised  the  other  arises,  namely, 
that  of  interference  with  State  rights.  We  take  so 
kindly  to  home  rule,  to  local  option,  to  other  forms  of 
State  rights,  that  we  readily  raise  that  cry. 

But  enough  has  here  been  said  to  intimate  the  danger 
that  lies  at  the  back  of  that  cry.  It  is  unwise  to  empha- 
size State  rights  to  the  detriment  of  Federal  rights,  but 
it  is  equally  unwise  to  emphasize  Federal  rights  at  the  ex- 
pense of  State  rights.  Thus  summarized  it  will  appear, 
why  the  theory  is  here  advocated,  that  Congress  should 
utilize  its  bicameral  form  for  this  purpose,  and  permit 
conditions  to  arise  and  to  prevail,  which  will  make  it  pos- 
sible for  the  Senate  to  stand  for  the  Feedral  side  and  the 
House  to  stand  for  the  State  side  of  each  question  as  it 
arises. 

When  the  American  Nation  attains  the  point  at  which 
it  is  now  aiming,  as  indicated  by  the  symptoms  of  civic 
awakening  all  over  the  United  States ;  when  it  sends  men 
to  both  houses  of  Congress,  irrespective  of  wealth  or  po- 
litical influence — without  political  trickery  and  machine 
play — it  will  be  able  to  emphasize  this  point  and  send  to 
the  Senate  men  of  large  views  and  broad  mental  horizon, 
who  will  be  able  to  grasp  within  the  scope  of  their  mental 
vision  the  needs,  advantages  and  requirements  of  the 
central  government,  and  to  the  House  men  of  equally 
comprehensive  caliber,  but  familiar  with  local  details,  men 
who  will  be  able  to  stand  for  whatever  a  State  may  have 
in  the  way  of  local  interests,  and  to  adjust  them  to  the 
requirements  of  the  larger  unit,  the  Federal  Government, 
as  represented  by  the  Senate  and  the  Senator. 


60  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  SENATE  OF  NEW  JERSEY  AND  QUESTIONS  THAT  PROP- 
ERLY COME  BEFORE  IT. 

WE  come  in  the  normal  course  of  study  to  the 
Senate  of  a  State  and  select  the  State  Senate 
of  the  State  of  New  Jersey  for  the  reader's 
consideration,  with  the  conviction  that  very  slight  modifi- 
cations of  the  general  principles  set  forth  will  adapt  all 
propositions  entertained  to  the  requirements   of  other 
States. 

Premising  again  the  broad  statement  that  the  Senate 
concerns  itself  with  general  propositions,  and  the  As- 
sembly with  particular  propositions,  we  can  enter  imme- 
diately upon  the  topic  which  naturally  falls  into  line  at 
this  point.  If  the  reader  will  hold  in  mind  that  the  gen- 
eral proposition,  as  advanced  in  previous  chapters,  ap- 
plied to  the  United  States  Congress,  resulted  in  the  sug- 
gestion that  in  all  problems  the  Senate  of  the  United 
States  represent,  or  try  to  represent,  the  Federal  Gov- 
ernment and  its  side  of  the  question  and  its  interests  in 
proposed  legislation,  while  the  House  more  predomi- 
nently  devote  itself  to  the  representation  of  the  interests 
of  individual  States,  he  can  readily  see  that  that  sugges- 
tion would  involve  for  the  State  of  New  Jersey  that  the 
Senate  concern  itself  with  such  questions  preeminently, 
which  involve  the  interests  of  the  entire  State,  while  the 
House  would,  if  this  suggestion  be  made  available  at  any 
time,  concern  itself  with  the  application  of  general  prin- 
ciples to  specific  localities.  Thus  the  Senate  would  paint 


THE    STATE    SENATE  61 

the  background  of  the  picture,  the  Assembly  would  put 
in  the  figures  and  adjust  perspectives.  In  each  case,  how- 
ever, action  would  of  course  involve  concurrence  on  the 
part  of  the  other  house. 

And  this  is  not  at  all  a  difficult  matter  in  such  a  State 
as  New  Jersey.  A  glance  at  the  map  will  instantly  out- 
line to  the  student  the  interests  of  the  State  which  are 
general.  The  first  is  its  riparian  interests.  The  second, 
its  railroad  interests.  The  third,  its  financial  or  corpo- 
rate interests.  The  fourth,  the  question  of  taxation. 
The  fifth,  its  potable  waters,  which  virtually  follows  as  a 
direct  sequence  from  its  riparian  interests.  And  the  sixth, 
the  problem  of  immigration.  Let  us  consider  these  in 
their  order. 

That  the  primary  and  largest  interest  of  the  State  of 
New  Jersey  is  its  riparian  interest,  goes  without  saying. 
The  Latin  word  "ripa"  or  "shore,"  on  which  the  term 
"riparian"  is  based,  indicates  that  "riparian"  interests 
are  "shore"  interests.  The  aspect  to  which  the  Senate 
would  most  naturally  turn  its  attention  would  involve  and 
include  the  several  phases  of  this  question,  which  it  nat- 
urally presents.  New  Jersey  is  very  nearly  all  "shore" 
and  that  shore  involves  the  phases  of  fishing,  of  shipping 
facilities,  of  oystering,  of  bathing  and  of  attack  in  time 
of  war.  Specific  features  of  fishing  include  the  question 
of  menhaden  fishing;  of  such  regulations  as  would  nat- 
urally be  called  for  under  the  work  imposed  upon  the 
Fish  and  Game  Commission,  and  other  similar  matters. 

The  oyster  interests  of  the  State  of  New  Jersey  are 
large  and  varied.  The  oyster  needs  all  the  care  that  can 
be  taken  of  it,  in  its  planting,  in  its  protection  and  in  its 
harvesting.  So  large  is  this  interest,  that,  although  it  is 
apparently  confined  to  the  shore,  it  is  nevertheless  a  State 
issue,  owing  to  its  importance  as  a  commercial  factor  in 


62  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

the  life  of  the  State.  Shipping  facilities  involve  railroad 
interests  and  are  covered  by  those  interests.  There  need 
here  be  added  only  the  question  of  the  creation  of  further 
harbors,  and  their  protection  by  breakwaters  at  various 
points  along  the  shore.  That  the  summer  resort,  in  re 
"bathing,"  is  an  item  of  State  interest  for  New  Jersey 
need  not  be  emphasized.  Our  shore  is  lined  with  summer 
resorts,  to  which  people  not  only  from  New  Jersey,  Penn- 
sylvania and  New  York  flock  in  great  masses  during  the 
summer,  but  to  which  come  long  lines  of  excursions  from 
almost  every  section  of  the  United  States  up  to  the  very 
centre  of  the  Middle  West.  But  a  summer  resort  in- 
volves transportation.  It  involves  the  railroad.  It  there- 
fore again  brings  on  the  railroad  interests,  in  the  con- 
sideration of  which  the  amount  of  traffic  done  during  the 
summer  season  in  the  transportation  of  passengers  to 
resorts,  is  an  important  factor  so  far  as  determining 
"earning  capacity"  and  other  points  are  concerned. 

And  finally  our  State  presents  to  the  Atlantic  Ocean 
and  to  any  foe  that  may  approach  from  that  side,  a  huge 
expanse  of  unprotected,  or  virtually  unprotected,  shore, 
the  existence  of  which  must  needs  come  to  the  Senate 
for  consideration,  should  that  emergency  ever  arise. 
When  we  consider  that  the  income  from  our  riparian 
assets  goes  to  the  support  of  the  schools  of  the  State,  it 
will  be  seen  that  this  interest  immediately  grows  to  the 
general  proportions  which  were  assigned  to  it  in  the  be- 
ginning, and  it  will  also  appear  why  the  "schools"  were 
omitted  from  the  list  of  "general  questions."  The  school 
is,  by  our  present  arrangement,  a  part  of  the  riparian  and 
railroad  question,  since  increased  taxation  recently  im- 
posed on  the  Railroads  by  legislation  and  court  decision, 
also  accrues  directly  to  the  benefit  of  the  schools. 

In  the  riparian  question,  in  the  State  of  New  Jersey, 


THE    STATE    SENATE  63 

there  is  at  present  an  aspect,  which  should  come  up  for 
early  consideration.  And  the  Senate  is  the  proper  body 
for  its  consideration,  with  reference  to  the  House  after 
the  decision  of  the  Senate  has  been  reached.  That  aspect 
is  one  with  which  our  readers  have  grown  familiar  of  late 
in  other  directions.  Just  as  municipalities  have  until  re- 
cently given  away  their  most  valuable  asset  to  private 
corporations,  namely,  their  streets,  just  so  the  State  has 
been  giving  away  its  most  valuable  asset  to  private  cor- 
porations, that  is,  its  water  front.  Under  the  haphazard 
regime  of  the  past  (and  I  hope  it  is  utterly  "past")  we 
have  given  away  values  which  have  grown  to  absolutely 
stupendous  proportions.  We  have  given  them  away  with 
a  grace  and  ease  hard  to  be  surpassed.  No  one  seems  to 
have  had  the  faintest  idea  that  the  "shore"  had  any  value 
at  all.  And  this  after  all  the  agitation  for  public  docks 
in  the  city  of  New  York,  in  Boston,  in  Baltimore  and  else- 
where. Millions  of  value  have  been  thrown  away  and 
withheld  from  the  State  treasury  with  a  reckless  abandon 
which  is  incredible. 

By  the  critic  the  cause  for  this  recklessness  would  be 
accounted  for  as  arising  from  the  fact  that  an  incumbent 
of  a  State  office  merely  fills  that  office  for  the  purpose  of 
drawing  his  salary,  and  without  reference  to  anything 
else.  But  this  criticism  is  entirely  too  sweeping.  There 
have  always  been  in  State  office  men  who  were  anxious 
to  conserve  the  interests  of  the  State.  But  things  have 
grown  so  rapidly  in  the  recent  past  that  it  has  been  al- 
most impossible  to  keep  pace  with  them.  And  hence  in 
this  department  of  State  work  we  find  the  same  hopeless 
confusion  as  in  many  others,  not  only  in  this  State  but  in 
every  State  of  the  Union.  It  will  be  necessary,  and  that 
at  an  early  date,  to  take  up  this  matter  and  to  decide  two 
things,  first,  the  application  of  a  time  limit  to  all  transac- 


64  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

tions  involving  riparian  rights,  and  next  the  revoca- 
tion of  all  previous  arrangements  in  which  there  can  be 
found  a  legal  flaw. 

The  State  must  resume  its  rights  in  its  shore.  It  is  its 
largest  asset.  Not  only  should  the  State  stop  giving 
away  these  enormous  values,  but  it  should  closely  safe- 
guard by  limitation  every  grant  hereafter  to  be  made.  It 
should  revoke  all  contracts  or  agreements,  made  at  a  time 
when  the  real  value  of  these  things  was  not  known  except 
to  the  shrewd  few  who  thereby  took  away  from  the  State 
a  right  and  a  set  of  values,  to  the  import  and  grandeur  of 
which  they  should  have  called  the  attention  of  the  State 
in  the  first  place,  instead  of  availing  themselves  of  those 
values  for  the  accumulation  of  private  wealth.  We  are 
nearing  the  border  of  honesty  where  the  public  conscience 
will  call  such  a  transaction  by  a  very  serious  name.  If  I 
as  an  individual  know  the  value  of  a  thing  and  take  it 
from  my  neighbor,  who  has  it  in  his  possession,  by  lead- 
ing him  into  the  belief,  or  leaving  him  in  the  belief,  that 
the  thing  has  no  value,  I  am  getting  goods  under  false 
pretenses.  The  principle  of  this  thing  is  not  changed 
by  the  fact  that  my  neighbor  happens  to  be  an  aggregate 
neighbor,  called  "the  State,"  and  by  my  being  an  aggre- 
gate individual  called  a  corporation.  This  method  of 
abandoning  the  Ten  Commandments  as  soon  as  we  enter 
upon  aggregate  life  is  not  only  ridiculous,  but  heinous. 

If  I  take  five  dollars  from  my  neighbor  by  fictitious 
peas,  which  are  supposed  to  be  under  a  certain  thimble 
and  are  not,  or  if  I  take  a  thousand  dollars  from  my 
neighbor  by  fictitious  values,  which  are  supposed  to  exist 
as  reality  upon  or  in  certain  papers,  but  which  are  not, 
or  by  the  suppression  of  values,  which  really  exist,  there 
is  no  virtual  difference  in  the  transaction.  There  is  a  sen- 
tence in  the  twentieth  chapter  of  Exodus,  which  indited 


THE    STATE    SENATE  65 

by  the  "finger  of  God,"  has  entered  upon  the  pages  of 
the  statute  books  of  every  civilized  nation,  which  covers 
all  three  transactions.  It  is  a  very  short  sentence.  There 
are  only  four  words  in  it.  It  is  preceded  by  no  legal  ver- 
biage, and  it  is  not  followed  by  any  "immediate  enacting 
clause."  But  it  is  eminently  and  divinely  to  the  purpose. 
And  it  is  so  utterly  familiar  that  it  need  not  be  quoted 
verbatim  here. 

Nor  need  the  Senate  hesitate  for  a  moment  to  revoke 
any  form  of  agreement  made  at  a  time  when  the  real 
value  of  a  thing  was  not  known  to  the  State.  Fundamen- 
tally the  body  which  has  a  right  to  give  a  thing,  has  a 
right  to  take  it  away.  No  legal  phraseology  is  here  at- 
tempted. None  is  needed.  If  the  State  of  New  Jersey 
has  at  any  time,  under  misapprehension,  given  any  one 
anything,  it  can  take  that  same  thing  away  again,  ma- 
king, of  course,  due  allowance  for  any  expense  to  which 
the  holder  for  the  time  being  has  gone. 

Pass  we  now  to  the  second  proposition — the  railroad. 
New  Jersey  being  a  riparian  State  and  at  the  same  time 
a  suburban  State,  the  railroad  grows  into  almost  dispro- 
portionate importance  immediately.  That  we  are  a  ri- 
parian State  has  just  been  shown.  That  we  are  a  subur- 
ban State,  and  that  the  people  from  Rahway  and  Metu- 
chen,  north,  do  business  in  New  York,  and  people  from 
Trenton,  south,  do  business  in  Philadelphia,  need  not  be 
commented  upon.  They  do.  New  Jersey  is  virtually 
the  suburb  of  the  two  great  metropoles,  New  York  and 
Philadelphia.  And  that  to  the  suburbanite  the  railroad 
is  an  essential,  needs  no  elaboration.  Thus  far  we  have 
attacked  the  serious  problem  of  the  taxation  of  railroads 
with  fair  success.  Further  steps  in  that  direction  may  be 
called  for  as  the  years  go  on.  But  when  the  work  required 
to  be  done  in  the  investigation  of  the  question  of  taxa- 


66  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

tion  came  to  be  accomplished,  those  who  were  engaged  in 
it  found  that  it  simply  served  as  an  opening  wedge  to 
two  further  questions.  One  was  the  general  question  of 
the  "corporation"  and  the  other  was  that  of  overcapitali- 
zation. Hence  the  third  and  fourth  propositions,  as 
enumerated  above,  become  part  of  this  general  proposi- 
tion. 

The  school  question,  too,  is  moved  into  an  angle  formed 
by  itself,  the  riparian  situation  and  the  taxation  of  rail- 
roads, because  the  State  of  New  Jersey  uses  virtually  all 
the  money  raised  from  railroads  by  taxation  for  its 
schools.  The  student  should  consequently  think  of  the 
school  as  being  supported  by  the  shore  and  by  the  rail- 
road, while  he  may  think  of  the  public  institutions,  the 
almshouses,  the  insane  asylums  and  so  forth  as  being 
largely  supported  by  the  taxation  of  corporations  other 
than  railroads.  If  the  wisdom  and  shrewdness  of  cor- 
porations makes  people  poor  or  drives  them  insane,  as 
many  contend,  then  the  genius  which  devised  this  latter 
arrangement  may  be  thought  of  as  being  almost,  if  not 
quite,  "inspired."  For  under  those  circumstances  the  ar- 
rangement is  satirically  advertent  and  beautiful. 

Radically,  therefore,  the  railroad,  the  corporation  and 
the  larger  outlines  of  finance,  of  taxation,  and  of  fran- 
chises, are  one  and  the  same  question.  If  the  Senate  of 
the  State  of  New  Jersey  could  devote  itself  to  a  serious 
study  of  this  question,  especially  in  its  most  serious  aspect 
of  "overcapitalization,"  it  would  be  doing  good  work 
and  it  would  be  doing  preeminently  its  own  work.  The 
reason  for  this  preeminence  has  been  unfortunately 
moved  into  the  foreground  by  an  unhappy  co-ordination 
of  suspicions  in  the  public  mind  of  late.  The  entire  se- 
quence of  suspicions  has  naturally  grouped  itself  about 
one  idea. 


THE    STATE    SENATE  67 

"If  corporate  influence,"  whispered  the  chief  suspicion 
to  its  minor  body  of  suspicions  in  the  public  mind,  "if 
corporate  influence  is  unduly  exerted — in  blunt  words — 
if  people  are  bought  in  Trenton,  and  if  they  are  bought 
by  men  of  shrewd  business  capacity,  will  not  that  very 
capacity  itself  suggest  that  it  is  cheaper  to  buy  a  ma- 
jority of  a  smaller  body,  even  if  the  single  votes  come 
higher,  than  it  is  to  buy  the  majority  of  a  larger  body? 
In  New  Jersey  it  would  be  cheaper  to  buy  twelve  men 
out  of  twenty-one  than  it  would  be  to  buy  thirty-one  out 
of  sixty." 

While  I  in  no  wise  share  this  attitude  of  mind  and  most 
earnestly  deplore  it,  I  cannot  but  confess  that  no  other 
suspicion  is  so  firmly  rooted  in  the  public  mind  as  this, 
both  in  reference  to  a  State  Senate  and  in  reference  to  the 
United  States  Senate.  And  this  suspicion,  prevalent  as 
it  is,  is  not  met  by  hasty  investigations  and  their  fully 
anticipated  whitewashings.  It  can  best  be  met  by  candid 
and  thorough  work  on  the  part  of  the  Senate. 

Rather  than  ascribe  the  present  condition  of  things  to 
the  lack  of  integrity  on  the  part  of  the  Senate,  I  should 
ascribe  it  to  the  unfortunate  growth  of  our  system  and 
method  of  law-making.  The  man  is  not  born  who  can 
work  to  advantage  under  it.  Few  results  of  any  value 
can  be  produced  under  it.  What  is  done,  is  done  rather 
in  spite  of  it  than  by  reason  of  it.  I  confess  to  a  sense 
of  admiration  of  the  body  of  men  which  can  with  the  in- 
ordinately clumsy  mechanism  of  our  legislative  procedure 
produce  so  many  satisfactory  results. 

Look  for  a  moment  at  any  one  question.  Take  that 
of  overcapitalization.  A  writer  in  The  Outlook  in  a  re- 
cent issue  gives  a  succinct  and  lucid  summary  of  this  mat- 
ter, using  the  State  of  Minnesota  as  the  central  figure. 
Substitute  the  State  of  New  Jersey  and  alter  the  name  of 


68  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

the  railroads  to  suit  the  change  and  the  numbers  to  suit 
the  case,  and  you  have  a  perfectly  applicable  proposition. 
Says  The  Outlook: 

"The  Great  Northern  Railroad  Company  was  autho- 
rized by  its  charter  to  issue  capital  stock  to  the  extent  of 
$30,000,000.  It  is  a  transportation  corporation  engaged 
in  interstate  commerce,  and  received  its  charter  from  the 
State  of  Minnesota.  The  conduct  of  this  corporation  is 
typical  of  the  conduct  of  nearly  all  of  the  great  trans- 
portation corporations  in  the  United  States  in  this,  that, 
since  the  day  it  was  organized,  it  has  habitually  ignored 
the  law  under  which  it  came  into  being,  and  has  violated 
the  statutes  of  Minnesota,  apparently  without  let  or 
hindrance. 

"Primarily  it  owes  allegiance  to  the  Commonwealth  of 
Minnesota.  But  it  exercises  its  powers  in  relation  to  in- 
terstate commerce  subj  ect  to  the  exclusive  supervision  and 
control  of  the  Federal  Government.  The  Minnesota  Leg- 
islature has  seen  fit  to  prohibit  carrying  corporations  or- 
ganized under  its  laws  to  issue  capital  stock  in  excess  of 
the  amount  authorized  by  their  respective  charters,  with- 
out the  consent  of  its  Railroad  and  Warehouse  Commis- 
sion. The  law  is  clear,  and  provides  that  such  corpora- 
tions, in  case  they  desire  to  increase  their  capital  stock, 
shall  make  written  application  to  the  commission  and  pro- 
cure its  written  consent  to  the  issue  of  additional  stock. 

"The  law  has  been  entirely  ignored  by  the  Great 
Northern,  which,  in  connection  with  the  Northern  Pa- 
cific and  the  Chicago,  Burlington  and  Quincy,  operates  a 
system  embracing  the  commerce  carried  on  within  the  vast 
territory,  north  of  the  Union  Pacific,  lying  between  the 
Great  Lakes  and  the  Pacific  Ocean.  As  the  country  grew 
in  wealth  and  prosperity,  as  the  population  of  this  fer- 
tile region  increased,  as  its  mineral  and  agricultural  re- 


THE    STATE    SENATE  69 

sources  have  been  gradually  developed,  the  earning  ca- 
pacity of  the  Great  Northern  has  increased  500  per  cent. 
It  formerly  earned  and  paid  to  its  stockholders,  over  and 
above  all  fixed  charges  and  expenses,  $2,100,000  annu- 
ally, or  seven  per  cent  on  its  $30,000,000  of  capital 
stock.  Its  earnings  gradually  increased  to  $4,200,000 
annually. 

"Instead  of  paying  fourteen  per  cent  on  the  $30,000,- 
000  of  original  stock,  it  issued  $30,000,000  additional, 
without  legal  authority  and  in  direct  violation  of  the  laws 
of  Minnesota,  and  paid  seven  per  cent  on  the  $60,000,- 
000.  Its  net  earnings  increased  to  $6,300,000  per  year, 
and  its  stock  was  again  increased  to  $90,000,000.  The 
earnings  grew  to  $8,400,000  annually,  and  the  stock  was 
increased  accordingly  to  $120,000,000.  The  net  earn- 
ings soon  exceeded  $10,500,000  annually,  and  another 
increase  of  $30,000,000  of  stock  was  issued,  making  the 
aggregate  value  of  the  stock  at  the  present  time  $150,- 
000,000,  on  which  it  pays  the  handsome  sum  of  $10,- 
500,000  annually,  or  seven  per  cent  on  this  entire  issue. 

"But  so  great  has  been  the  growth  and  development 
of  the  country  that  this  company  now  seems  to  be  earning 
net  every  year  $14,700,000,  which  will  justify  an  ad- 
ditional increase  of  $60,000,000  of  stock,  as  the  increased 
earnings  will  enable  it  to  pay  seven  per  cent  on  $210,- 
000,000,  instead  of  on  $150,000,000,  the  amount  of  its 
present  issue. 

"The  commercial  history  of  the  world  affords  nothing 
to  equal  this  wonderful  exhibition  of  economic  achieve- 
ment, which  has  been  duplicated  in  like  manner  by  the 
other  great  transportation  corporations  of  the  United 
States. 

"The  figures  are  startling  when  we  consider  that  these 
vast  sums  are  not  earned  in  ordinary  business  transac- 


70  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

tions,  by  the  employment  of  private  capital  in  ordinary 
commercial  pursuits,  where  success  among  competing  ri- 
vals is  the  result  of  superior  skill  and  business  ability.  If 
this  money,  levied  upon  and  taken  from  the  public  by 
a  private  corporation  engaged  in  interstate  commerce, 
were  used  to  build  new  railways  and  to  increase  equip- 
ment, trackage  and  terminal  facilities  to  an  extent  which 
would  enable  every  traveler  and  every  shipper  to  use  the 
highways  with  convenience  and  comfort,  so  that  no  such 
thing  as  a  car  famine  would  ever  be  heard  of,  perhaps  no 
complaints  would  arise  and  no  remedies  be  invoked. 

"The  enormous  increase  in  the  revenues  of  the  carrier 
has  been  absorbed  by  the  stockholders  who  subscribed  for 
the  stock  and  who  receive  the  dividends.  But  the  money 
paid  to  the  carrier  for  the  stock  apparently  has  not  been 
used  to  increase  carrying  facilities.  How  has  it  been  used  ? 
Increased  facilities  have  been  furnished  from  time  to 
time,  but  such  as  have  been  provided  are  grossly  inade- 
quate. The  carrier  has  failed  absolutely  to  increase  its 
facilities  so  as  to  provide  adequate  public  service  or  any- 
thing that  approaches  it.  In  failing  to  do  so  it  has 
failed  to  perform  the  duties  for  which  it  was  chartered, 
and  has  failed  to  fulfil  the  ends  and  purposes  for  which 
it  was  created.  And  this  lamentable  failure  is  not  a  pri- 
vate matter,  but  is  essentially  a  matter  of  public  concern. 

"The  carrier  has  failed  to  keep  abreast  with  the  in- 
crease of  population  and  the  enormous  increase  of  busi- 
ness, which  is  now  six  times  greater  than  when  it  earned 
seven  per  cent  on  its  original  capital.  It  has  failed  to 
furnish  sufficient  trackage,  equipment,  or  adequate  ter- 
minal facilities.  Statistics  show  that  railway  mileage  has 
increased  only  twenty  per  cent  in  ten  years,  while  the 
earnings  have  increased  110  per  cent.  Trackage  as  dis- 
tinguished from  mileage  is  also  miserably  inadequate. 


THE    STATE    SENATE  71 

"As  a  consequence,  the  increased  traffic  has  so  far  out- 
grown the  facilities  furnished  by  the  carrier  that  the  in- 
habitants of  the  territory  who  are  compelled  to  rely  on 
this  particular  railway  to  carry  on  their  business  cannot, 
with  ordinary  celerity,  move  their  crops  or  the  products 
of  their  mines  or  their  factories.  The  investigation  of 
the  fuel  famine,  and  car  shortage  in  the  Northwest,  held 
in  December  last,  revealed  the  fact  that  fifty  million  bush- 
els of  grain,  as  nearly  as  could  be  estimated,  remained  on 
the  farms  or  in  the  country  elevators  of  North  Dakota. 

"It  was  further  shown  that  in  some  localities  no  freight 
trains  passed  the  depots  at  times  for  periods  ranging 
from  three  to  four  weeks.  It  is  clear  that  one  railroad 
cannot  do  the  business  which  requires  the  services  of  at 
least  three." 

While  not  directly  in  line  with  the  specific  scope  of 
this  article,  the  following  deduction  by  the  writer  of 
the  article  is  interesting  and  irresistible. 

"The  President  has  said  in  this  connection,  in  his  recent 
message  to  Congress,  in  discussing  the  delinquencies  of 
public  service  corporations,  'In  special  privilege  they  live, 
and  move,  and  have  their  being.' 

"When  public  transportation  corporations  fail  to  fulfi] 
their  mission,  and  fail  to  achieve  the  ends  and  purposes 
of  their  creation,  they  have  violated  their  charters,  and 
the  trusts  and  obligations  imposed  upon  them.  The  in- 
dictment against  them  is  that  they  do  not  carry  for  all 
upon  equal  terms  and  conditions.  They  do  not  move  traf- 
fic with  ordinary  celerity.  They  do  not  transport  per- 
sons in  comfort,  nor  at  times  suited  to  public  convenience. 
They  do  not  furnish  adequate  equipment,  trackage,  or 
terminal  facilities  to  keep  pace  with  the  increasing  popu- 
lation and  the  expanding  volume  of  business.  They  have 
failed  to  confine  themselves  to  their  duties  as  carriers,  but 


72  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

have  assumed  to  become  miners,  shippers  and  manufac- 
turers. 

"In  so  doing  they  have  acquired  private  interests,  the 
retention  of  which  is  repugnant  to  their  public  duties.  As 
carriers,  exercising  special  privileges  and  sovereign 
power,  they  have  allied  themselves  with  commercial  enter- 
prises. They  have  acquired  extensive  holdings  in  corpo- 
rations engaged  in  mining  coal,  producing  and  refining 
oil,  in  the  manufacture  and  sale  of  iron,  steel,  sugar  and 
ice;  as  dealers  in  cattle  and  live  stock,  in  dressed  meats, 
and  in  all  the  necessaries  of  life.  By  giving  special  rates 
for  the  carriage  of  these  articles  over  the  public  highways 
to  corporations  in  which  they,  as  directors  of  the  carry  ing 
corporations,  are  interested — because  they  own  stock  of 
the  trusts  and  participate  in  their  dividends — they  prac- 
tically choose  who  shall  use  these  highways,  to  the  exclu- 
sion of  shippers  not  thus  favored,  and  thereby  make  them 
no  longer  public  but  private. 

"The  result  is  a  gigantic  conspiracy  against  trade  and 
commerce,  the  conspirators  being  the  public  carriers  and 
the  great  trusts  with  which  they  are  partners  and  allies. 
The  carriers  and  the  industrial  combines  have  practically 
secured  a  monopoly  of  trade  and  commerce  in  the  neces- 
saries of  life. 

"This  result,  so  far  as  the  carriers  are  concerned,  could 
never  have  been  accomplished  without  the  exercise  of  the 
sovereign  power  which  the  carriers  exercise  exclusively  in 
operating  the  public  highways  of  the  country.  In  other 
words,  the  creature  has  become,  in  one  sense,  a  separate 
branch  of  the  government,  coordinate  with  the  creator  in 
the  exercise  of  the  sovereignty  conferred." 

Giving  this  huge  proposition  its  proper  import,  we 
have  a  problem  which  cannot  be  studied  by  hurried  legis- 
lation in  a  few  weeks.  It  requires  more  time,  and  what- 


THE    STATE    SENATE  73 

ever  of  apparent  remissness  or  of  apparent  deliberate 
evasion  there  may  be  or  have  been  involved  in  any  action 
of  the  Senate  hitherto,  it  can  be  readily  and  easily  ex- 
plained by  the  fact  that  the  subjects  to  be  considered  are 
great,  important  and  complex  in  their  nature  and  no  one 
can  be  asked  to  give  them  due  and  proper  consideration 
in  six  weeks.  Hence  arises  inaction  and  in  some  cases 
apparent  indirection.  The  remedy  lies  right  on  the  sur- 
face. If  six  weeks  is  not  a  sufficiently  long  period  of  time 
a  longer  period  must  be  devoted  to  the  work. 

Within  the  past  three  or  four  years  several  important 
measures  were  worked  up  by  civic  organizations.  Why  ? 
Simply  because  the  Senate,  which  is  the  proper  body  of 
the  State  machinery  to  work  them  up,  did  not  have  time 
to  do  it.  A  great  mass  of  legislation  is  poured  in  upon 
the  two  houses  every  year,  and  in  trying  to  do  a  mass  of 
things,  nothing  is  done.  These  civic  bodies  have  worked 
up  the  limited  franchises,  the  equal  taxation,  the  civil 
service  and  the  railroad  commission  bills  and  several  oth- 
ers. They  have  just  completed  changes  in  the  legal 
statutes  which  are  designed  to  meet  the  requirements  of 
the  "overcapitalization"  evil.  I  have  reason  to  know  that 
five  men  worked  nine  months  on  this  last  proposition. 
These  five  men  could  not  have  done  it  in  six  weeks.  They 
could  not  have  done  it  in  ten.  Neither  can  a  body  of  Sen- 
ators do  it  in  six  or  in  ten  weeks.  They  must  needs  con- 
tinue their  sessions  throughout  the  year.  There  lies  the 
solution.  There  lies  the  way  in  the  direction  of  which  the 
Senate  can  resume  the  work  which  has  slipped  through 
its  fingers,  and  wherewith  it  has  burdened  civic  organi- 
zations, to  put  the  matter  in  its  most  direct  form. 

But  the  continuance  of  a  session  throughout  the  year 
does  not  mean  continuous  sessions  at  Trenton.  It  means 
simply  this,  that  a  certain  urgent  subject  be  turned  over 


74  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

to  a  Senate  committee  for  the  year,  and  that  that  commit- 
tee be  asked  to  report  at  the  next  session  of  the  Legisla- 
ture its  findings.  If  out  of  the  constant  and  unceasing 
stream  of  demand  made  upon  the  Legislature  one  topic 
be  selected  for  adjustment  in  any  one  year,  say  overcap- 
italization one  year,  potable  water  the  next  year,  the  rev- 
ocation of  franchises  the  year  following  and  so  forth, 
the  one  subject  would  go  into  the  hands  of  a  committee 
on  finance,  the  other  into  the  hands  of  a  riparian  commit- 
tee, the  third  into  the  hands  of  the  Judiciary  Committee 
or  to  other  committees,  if  these  be  considered  inappropri- 
ate. This  would  place  an  annual  task  upon  some  one 
committee.  The  State  would  not  impose  an  undue  burden 
upon  any  one  body  of  lawmakers,  and  the  results  thus 
obtained  would  be  worth  while.  They  could  be  taken 
as  a  basis  of  operations  for  the  legislation  of  several 
years  while  such  other  legislation  can  be  enacted  as  needed 
along  the  lines  of  the  present  system. 


THE  STATE  SENATE        75 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  SENATE  OF  NEW  JERSEY  AND  THE  QUESTIONS  OF  IM- 
MIGRATION  AND   POTABLE  WATER   SUPPLY. 

IT  requires  no  elucidation  to  show  that  New  Jersey  is 
an  immigrant  State.  It  is  so  by  virtue  of  its  situs. 
As  a  virtual  suburb  of  New  York  City,  in  its  north- 
ern section,  it  shares  interests  with  that  great  gateway 
for  the  tide  of  immigration  into  this  country,  and  its  in- 
terests are  influenced  more  largely  than  many  suppose  by 
that  tide. 

The  tide  itself  is  at  present  dominated  by  the  note 
which  has  been  ringing  through  it  for  the  past  seven  or 
eight  years,  and  that  note  is  the  Italian.  Despite  the 
fears  entertained  in  a  vague  and  general  way  by  those 
unfamiliar  with  the  subject  in  its  details,  there  is  no 
reason  to  make  this  particular  feature  of  the  question  one 
of  specific  deliberation,  since  the  fears  entertained  by  the 
uninformed  are  groundless  usually. 

The  Italian,  as  an  economic  and  as  an  ethic  factor  of 
the  question,  need  not  be  constituted  a  source  of  anxiety. 
In  general  he  makes  a  good  citizen.  He  is  as  good  a  citi- 
zen in  the  second  generation  as  is  the  German,  the  Irish- 
man, the  Spaniard.  He  brings  with  him,  however,  one 
or  two  characteristics  which  thrust  him  forward  into  the 
limelight  of  public  censure  for  a  brief  period,  chief 
among  them  his  tendency  toward  stilettos  and  "Black 
Hand"  letters.  But  these  traits,  while  locally  and  occa- 
sionally serious,  and  always  within  national  limits,  are  not 
really  more  serious  than  the  rationalistic  tendency  of  the 


76  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

German,  or  the  hot  temper  of  the  Spaniard,  or  the  candid 
willingness  to  investigate  the  strength  of  the  Bureau  of 
Charities  on  the  part  of  a  large  number  of  those  for 
whom  a  familiar  saint  performed  miracles  of  exorcism 
in  reference  to  serpents. 

So  far,  therefore,  as  the  Italian  is  concerned,  there  is 
the  making  of  a  good  citizen  in  him,  and  there  is  no 
ground  for  fear.  But  when  we  realize  that  the  tide  of 
Italian  influx  is  falling  and  the  tide  of  Slav  influx  rising, 
there  is  larger  reason  for  anxiety.  The  Italian  is  still  and 
entirely  part  of  the  Indo- Aryan  and  Anglo-Saxon  com- 
bine, through  its  Romance  branch,  to  which  we  habitually 
refer  when  we  speak  of  the  Caucasian  race.  But  the  Slav 
is  so  largely  an  admixture  of  Asiatic  blood  as  to  virtually 
throw  the  force  of  immigration  into  that  territory  which 
we  have  hitherto  in  the  United  States  thought  of  as  prop- 
er matter  for  legislative  exclusion.  That  broad  belt  of 
land  from  which  this  immigration  comes,  the  fringe  con- 
stituted of  Servia,  Montenegria,  the  Bukowina,  Herze- 
govina, Bosnia  and  the  lower  edge  of  Siberia,  where  it 
borders  upon  Mongol  territory  and  upon  Manchuria,  and 
those  corners  which  constitute  ancient  Iran  and  Baku, 
and  which  we  now  loosely  call  "Armenia,"  together  with 
the  Southern  (German)  belt  of  Little  Russia,  which  is 
sending  us  great  hordes  of  Hebrews — all  that  territory 
is  the  source  of  a  mixed  multitude  such  as  America  has 
not  hitherto  been  called  upon  to  absorb  or  even  to  study 
in  any  intimate  way.  And  this  vast  horde,  increasing  an- 
nually and  destined  presently  to  constitute  the  main  flow 
of  the  tide  of  immigration  as  does  the  Italian  now,  pre- 
sents problems  for  study  which  will  require  the  utmost 
care,  tact  and  research. 

I  do  not  number  among  those  who  fear  that  we  will  not 
be  able  to  assimilate  these  people,  for  I  have  a  faith  in  the 


THE    STATE    SENATE  77 

American  people  which  nothing  can  shake.  But  these 
people  bring  with  them  standards  of  morality,  ethic  tone- 
values,  which  ring  new  in  this  country. 

The  popular  mind  sees  their  contaminating  influence. 
It  sees  it  in  the  conversation  of  children  of  tender  years ; 
in  the  lowering  of  the  moral  tone  of  the  stage ;  in  the  ava- 
ricious and  greedy  way  in  which  certain  classes  of  jour- 
nals are  read,  which  cater  by  detailed  reports  of  criminal 
proceedings  and  other  means  to  the  depraved  tastes  of 
this  particular  class  of  reader,  tending  to  deprave  much 
original  taste  not  yet  contaminated ;  in  the  nightmare  of 
the  billboard;  in  the  explosion  of  bombs  for  private  en- 
mity. It  realizes  that  there  is  contamination,  taint  and 
plague  there  and  unconsciously  it  harks  back  to  the  word- 
ing of  Holy  Writ  and  the  long  code  of  regulation  for  the 
cleansing  of  leprosy  in  men  and  houses,  since  it  is  startled 
into  the  subconscious  realization  that  this  kind  of  thing 
is  mental  leprosy,  and  destroys  the  fiber  and  substance  of 
the  mind,  as  does  physical  leprosy  that  of  the  body.  Both 
are  the  same  kind  of  uncleanness. 

There  is  no  need  of  multiplying  examples.  These  peo- 
ple will  and  must  needs  bring  their  mental  atmosphere 
with  them.  And  the  treatment  which  will  fairly  realize 
their  shortcomings,  without  unfairly  limiting  their  claims 
upon  our  liberties  and  institutions,  which  will  adequately 
meet  the  demands  created  by  their  colonizing  tendencies 
in  our  large  cities,  the  consideration  of  the  requirements 
begotten  of  their  religious  or  possibly  irreligious  stand- 
ards of  measurement  for  moral  values,  all  these  create  a 
huge  problem,  very  much  more  serious  than  that  pre- 
sented by  Black  Hand  letters  or  stilettos. 

Take  just  one  other  instance.  Let  me  say,  here  is  a 
colony  of  Greeks.  A  large  body  of  people,  probably  of 
very  heterogeneous  racial  and  national  extraction,  is  cov- 


78  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

ered  by  the  name.  With  the  passion  of  the  Spaniard  and 
the  seductive  fascination  of  race  antiquity,  this  body  of 
people  combines  a  peculiar  lawlessness,  which  it  does  not 
so  recognize,  which  is  now  and  will  be  in  the  future  ex- 
ceedingly difficult  to  meet.  Petty  thefts  seem  to  be  re- 
garded about  the  same  as  they  were  among  the  Zingara 
of  the  last  century,  and,  by  the  way,  the  Zingara  are  a 
branch  of  this  very  people.  There  is  a  nomadism,  which 
can  no  longer  be  called  bohemianism,  among  this  people, 
which  makes  lawabiding  citizenship  an  almost  inconceiv- 
able thing  to  them.  Two  or  three  great  strapping  fellows 
do  not  at  all  consider  it  beneath  their  dignity  to  hold  up 
a  little  schoolboy  and  relieve  him  of  his  dime. 

The  regard  for  woman  which  the  American  has  by 
birth  and  by  nature,  is  not  present  in  any  marked  degree, 
in  this  class  of  people.  The  wisdom  of  denying  them  nat- 
uralization for  a  measurably  long  period  of  time  reacts, 
in  that  they  feel  themselves  quasi  f ranchiseless,  and  there- 
fore in  a  position  which  leaves  upon  their  mind  the  im- 
pression of  outlawry.  They  are  not  citizens  and  will  not 
be  for  a  time,  and  they,  consequently  by  an  odd  distor- 
tion of  a  reasoning  process,  feel  that  they  need  not  obey 
the  law.  They  feel  that  the  law  is  made  for  citizens,  not 
for  non-citizens.  When  this  is  placed  side  by  side  with 
the  same  feeling  in  the  mind  of  an  entirely  different  class 
of  people,  it  will  be  found  that  such  comparison  infinitely 
aggravates  the  situation.  There  is  a  class  of  American 
citizens  who  entertain  the  same  idea  of  the  law.  They 
feel  that  the  law  is  not  made  for  them;  that  they  have 
the  means  of  buying  their  way  through  any  kind  of  a 
wall,  which  the  law  might  erect  around  any  one  situation, 
or  of  hiring  some  one  to  burrow  under  it. 

This  way  of  "buying  the  law,"  when  persisted  in  for 
a  few  years  naturally  and  inevitably  produces  in  the  man 


THE    STATE    SENATE  79 

who  follows  that  course  a  callousness  and  a  contempt  for 
the  law,  which  effectually  debars  and  invalidates  the 
legal  fiction  which  we  have  been  in  the  habit  of  desig- 
nating the  "majesty  of  the  law."  Such  men  care  as  little 
for  the  law  as  do  their  confreres,  who  occupy  the  humbler 
position  of  "Greek"  colonists.  The  law  is  to  them  not  a 
means  of  restraint,  therefore  not  an  obstacle,  and  there- 
fore not  an  object.  They  disregard  it  in  toto.  Does  any 
one  desire  to  exercise  the  extreme  f  oolhardiness  of  think- 
ing that  the  "Greek"  footpad  who  holds  up  the  little 
schoolboy  for  a  dime  is  not  aware  of  the  fact  that  in  the 
inaccessible  higher  reaches  of  society,  the  same  thing  is 
done  under  another  name?  The  conversation  among 
these  men  reveals  an  astounding  familiarity  with  doubtful 
"deals"  in  realty  and  railroads.  Over  their  tongues  roll 
the  names  of  "magnates"  with  a  glibness  bred  of  utter 
familiarity  with  men  and  things.  And  can  any  system 
of  legal  procedure  prove  efficient  in  the  depth  of  the  cur- 
rent which  fails  to  curb  the  "merry  wavelets"  on  the  sur- 
face? 

It  is  along  this  line  and  similar  lines  of  reasoning,  that 
the  Senate  of  the  State  finds  its  warrant  for  any  investi- 
gation of  the  financial  system  of  the  State  and  its  cor- 
poration laws,  which  it  may  wish  to  undertake  or  order. 
When  we  use  the  sentence  "purify  the  source"  we  are 
most  inclined  to  think  of  something  which  is  deep  below. 
Sometimes  the  purification  of  the  source  involves  begin- 
ning at  the  top.  Lawlessness  is  lawlessness  wherever  it 
may  be  found  and  the  deeper  foundation  of  the  morale 
of  the  law  and  of  obedience  and  of  making  it  possible  to 
be  obedient  to  the  law  constitute  a  series  of  problems, 
which  the  Senate  of  any  State  can  very  properly  under- 
take to  study  and  to  work  upon.  It  is  in  this  and  many 
other  ways  that  the  increase  of  the  number  of  the  "sub- 


80  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

merged  tenth"  goes  hand  in  hand  with  the  most  intricate 
working  of  higher  society  and  the  immigration  question 
most  naturally  opens  out  this  line  of  consideration. 

The  second  topic,  so  far  as  the  State  of  New  Jersey  is 
concerned,  is  the  potable  water  supply.  The  broad  out- 
lines of  this  most  serious  problem  are  readily  stated.  Pop- 
ulation in  the  northern  section  of  the  State  of  New  Jer- 
sey is  rapidly  growing  more  and  more  dense.  There  is 
no  thinkable  possibility  of  its  growing  less  so.  That  pop- 
ulation will  need  water.  Its  need  of  water  will  not  de- 
crease ;  it  will  constantly  increase.  But  the  waters  of  the 
State  are  a  relatively  fixed  quantity.  They  will  not  in- 
crease. If  anything  they  will  decrease.  Here  then  is  a 
most  serious  problem.  What  can  and  shall  the  State  do 
to  see  that  its  citizens  shall  have  water  to  drink  and  to 
use  for  ordinary  purposes  of  life  and  industry? 

Governor  Stokes,  in  his  first  message,  said : 

"We  have  108  fresh-water  lakes  distributed  through- 
out the  State,  covering  14,000  acres.  Where  practica- 
ble these  should  be  set  apart  as  public  parks  and  carefully 
preserved  for  the  use  of  the  people  of  the  State.  They 
should  become  the  property  of  the  State  in  connection 
with  its  forestry  reservations.  The  State  now  owns  no 
potable  waters,  but  it  could  acquire  these  lakes,  and, 
through  the  ownership  of  forestry  reservations,  the 
sources  of  our  potable  streams.  The  titles  to  these  inland 
lakes  were  vested  in  the  proprietors  of  East  and  West 
Jersey.  Where  they  have  not  been  sold  they  still  reside 
in  these  corporations  and  constitute  property  rights. 

"The  State  could  purchase  these  or  secure  them, 
through  condemnation  proceedings,  under  proper  legisla- 
tion. The  same  course  should  apply  to  the  inland  lakes 
that  have  passed  to  the  control  of  private  interests,  where 
this  could  be  accomplished  without  inflicting  injustice 


THE    STATE    SENATE  81 

upon  the  owners.  This  subject  is  of  such  importance  as 
to  warrant  action.  It  is  so  intricate  and  complex  as  to 
require  a  full  investigation  of  the  facts  involved  and  the 
best  knowledge  on  the  subject  in  order  to  insure  wise  and 
effective  legislation.  I  suggest,  subject  to  the  judgment 
of  the  Legislature,  that  some  commission,  preferably  the 
Riparian,  be  authorized  to  investigate  this  proposition, 
its  practicability  and  probable  cost,  and,  if  possible,  make 
at  least  a  partial  report  at  this  session  of  the  Legislature, 
if  it  be  found  that  some  preliminary  legislation  is  neces- 
sary. 

"If  the  legal  principles  advocated  by  the  State  in  the 
case  of  the  Attorney-General  vs.  the  Hudson  County 
Water  Company  are  sustained  in  the  Court  of  Errors  and 
Appeals,  not  only  will  the  right  of  the  State  to  prohibit 
the  sale  of  potable  waters  beyond  its  confines  have  been 
confirmed,  but  the  question  will  arise  as  to  the  right  of 
individuals  or  corporations  to  appropriate  and  sell  pota- 
ble waters  within  the  State  without  the  State's  consent. 
Exactly  how  far  if  at  all  the  State's  rights  have  been  in- 
fringed upon,  by  what  means  they  should  be  preserved, 
and  how  the  interests  of  the  people  may  be  conserved  in 
the  preservation  and  distribution  of  our  potable  waters, 
are  matters  of  concern  which  should  receive  the  earnest 
consideration  of  the  Legislature  and  which  make  the 
gathering  of  data  and  information  upon  this  subject  all 
the  more  important.  I  cannot  too  strongly  urge  your 
prompt  action  upon  this  subject." 

In  his  second  message  he  says : 

"Our  potable  water  supply  presents  the  most  import- 
ant problem  before  the  people  of  the  State.  There  is  in 
the  State  an  ample  supply  of  water  for  the  present  and 
for  an  indefinite  period  in  the  future,  if  this  supply  be 
properly  conserved  and  kept  pure.  The  right  of  the 


82  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

State  to  do  this  is  unquestioned,  under  the  recent  inter- 
pretation of  our  courts:  'In  our  potable  waters  we  have 
a  vast  natural  asset  belonging  to  the  people,  the  con- 
servation and  purity  of  which  is  indispensable  to  their 
health  and  well  being.'  The  use  of  this  water  is  so 
necessary  to  life  that  a  direct  and  active  control  over 
the  diversion  thereof  for  domestic  and  municipal  pur- 
poses should  be  exercised  by  the  State. 

"The  creation  of  a  State  water  supply  commission  to 
control  and  regulate  the  diversion  of  potable  waters 
without  interfering  with  present  municipal  or  vested 
rights,  or  the  vesting  of  some  such  power  in  a  State 
board  already  in  existence,  would  seem  to  be  necessary 
to  save  this  valuable  State  asset. 

"Prompt  action  in  this  respect  would  anticipate  fur- 
ther acquirement  of  water  rights  by  private  interests. 

"The  rapid  growth  of  our  population  in  the  metro- 
politan district  is  drawing  heavily  upon  our  present 
available  supply.  The  dry  weather  flow  of  the  Passaic 
River,  normally  85,000,000  gallons  daily,  has  been  re- 
duced to  scarcely  35,000,000  gallons  by  the  demands 
upon  it,  and  this  in  spite  of  the  large  storage  reser- 
voirs already  constructed.  The  daily  drafts  upon  the 
Hackensack  River  now  exceed  the  estimated  minimum 
flow  in  a  time  of  extreme  drought.  One-half  the  pop- 
ulation of  the  State  depend  upon  these  two  rivers  and 
their  tributaries.  By  reason  of  their  geographic  loca- 
tion, the  demands  upon  them  must  greatly  increase  in 
the  future,  and  if  these  demands  are  to  be  met,  storage 
reservoirs  must  be  constructed  to  conserve  the  surplus 
waters. 

"The  amount  of  water  which  runs  to  waste  out  of  the 
Passaic  Valley  in  a  week  in  time  of  flood,  would  supply 
the  whole  upper  part  of  the  State  for  a  year.  The  con- 


THE    STATE    SENATE  83 

servation  of  the  water  in  times  of  flood  would  provide 
an  available  surplus  for  the  dry  season. 

"The  erection  of  a  storage  reservoir  in  the  Passaic 
Valley  would  serve  many  economic  purposes.  The  loca- 
tion of  a  dam  for  this  purpose,  whether  at  Mountain 
View  or  Little  Falls,  is  an  engineering  problem  to  be 
solved  by  experts,  and  not  in  a  legislative  message.  A 
storage  reservoir  in  this  section  is  not  a  new  suggestion. 
It  has  been  frequently  discussed,  and  been  the  subject  of 
many  reports.  It  is  now  a  question  of  acute  importance, 
because  of  the  recent  disastrous  floods  in  the  Passaic 
Valley,  and  the  pressing  necessity  of  developing  our 
water  supplies  for  use  in  the  near  future. 

"A  reservoir  under  the  control  of  the  State  would 
guarantee  a  potable  water  supply  for  an  indefinite 
period. 

"The  reservoir  would  increase  the  volume  of  the  Pas- 
saic at  Little  Falls,  and  would  provide  a  flow  of  at  least 
one  hundred  million  gallons  daily,  where  at  times  the 
flow  is  now  but  thirty-five  million  gallons.  It  would  also 
increase  the  available  water  power  at  Little  Falls,  Pat- 
erson  and  Dundee,  to  the  advantage  of  the  industrial 
enterprises  of  those  sections. 

"It  would  improve  the  condition  of  the  lower  Passaic 
and  prevent  the  river  bed  from  becoming  dry  at  times, 
or  from  shrinking  into  a  series  of  unwholesome  pools. 

"The  increased  flow  due  to  the  storage  reservoir  would 
make  the  river  more  attractive  and  healthful  for  resi- 
dence along  its  banks.  It  would  materially  assist  in 
flushing  the  river  and  thus  aid  in  solving  the  pollution 
problem.  It  would  control  floods,  such  as  those  which 
proved  so  disastrous  in  1902  and  1903,  and  save  a  vast 
amount  of  property  from  destruction. 

"As  a  scenic  feature,  it  has  further  claims  to  consider- 


84  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

ation.  For  low  meadows  and  flats,  now  breeding  places 
for  mosquitoes,  it  would  substitute  a  broad  expanse  of 
water  in  the  form  of  a  picturesque  lake  that  would  add 
to  the  attractiveness  of  the  Passaic  Valley.  Its  charms 
in  this  respect,  both  for  residents  and  guests  in  this  sec- 
tion, appeal  to  the  imagination." 

To  this  must  needs  be  added  several  features  as  to 
"underground  waters,"  as  reported  upon  by  the  Ripari- 
an Commission,  acting  as  a  commission  on  potable  waters 
under  the  Governor's  appointment.  The  commission 
says: 

"The  geological  strata  of  the  State  everywhere  con- 
tain water,  the  amount  depending  upon  the  porosity  of 
the  rocks,  the  topography  and  the  rainfall.  These  waters 
become  available  chiefly  by  seepage,  by  springs  and  by 
wells.  Comparatively  little  potable  water  is  taken  from 
springs  directly ;  the  supplies  from  seepage  and  springs 
for  the  most  part  feed  the  lakes  and  streams,  thus  be- 
coming surface  waters. 

"The  ownership  of  underground  supplies  has  been 
passed  upon  by  the  highest  court  of  the  State  in  the  fol- 
lowing words : 

"  'We  may  concede,  also,  for  present  purposes,  that 
subterranean  waters,  such  as  may  be  reached  only  by 
driving  wells,  when  thus  acquired  become  absolutely  the 
property  of  the  proprietor  of  the  soil,  and  may  be  dealt 
with  by  him  as  merchandise,  and  that  if  they  be  thus 
converted  into  a  merchantable  commodity  the  State  would 
not  be  permitted  to  prohibit  its  transportation  beyond 
the  confines  of  the  State.  Water  thus  taken  from  wells 
may  be  placed  on  the  same  plane  with  oil  and  natural  gas, 
concerning  the  latter  of  which  it  was  held  by  the  Su- 
preme Court  of  Indiana  in  State,  ex  rel.  Corwin,  v.  In- 
diana and  Ohio  Oil,  etc.,  Co.,  120  Ind.  575,  that  the 


THE    STATE    SENATE  85 

State  could  not  constitutionally  prohibit  its  transporta- 
tion beyond  the  confines  of  the  State.'  (New  Jersey 
Court  of  Errors  and  Appeals,  Attorney-General  vs. 
Hudson  County  Water  Company). 

"If,  in  a  given  case,  the  draft  on  wells  were  so  great 
as  to  materially  diminish  the  flow  of  surface  streams  in 
the  vicinity,  it  would  appear  that  the  rights  of  the  State 
and  of  individual  riparian  owners  were  infringed  there- 
by, and  the  question  would  arise  whether  an  injunction 
might  not  be  obtained  to  prevent  this  injury." 

Right  here  is  opened  a  most  serious  possibility,  and  it 
would  be  well  for  the  Senate  of  the  State  of  New  Jersey 
to  consider  the  validity  of  the  Supreme  Court's  cata- 
loguing water  with  oil  and  gas ;  to  consider  the  question 
of  piping  underground  waters  out  of  the  State,  when  the 
supply  of  surface  waters  depends  upon  the  subterranean 
supply ;  to  consider  the  general  proposition  as  to  the  re- 
lation of  municipal  ownership  to  State  control,  and  the 
differentiation  between  water  supplied  by  one  community 
to  another  from  its  surplus  and  water  supplied  by  a  pri- 
vate concern  as  a  merchandisable  commodity.  These  and 
many  other  queries  arise,  when  the  mind  is  turned  to  the 
consideration  of  the  potable  water  supply,  and  it  is  evi- 
dent that  the  Senate  cannot  find  a  more  important  and 
vital  topic  to  which  to  devote  its  time  and  its  energies 
than  in  the  preparation  of  legislative  measures  whereby 
these  perplexing  questions  may  reach  their  final  settle- 
ment. 


86  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE   HOUSE   OF   ASSEMBLY,    ITS    FUNCTIONS,     ITS     LIMITA- 
TIONS  AND   ITS   ACHIEVEMENTS. 

IF  in  the  State  the  Senate  concerns  itself  naturally 
with  those  functions  which  are  general,  and  with 
little  or  no  reference  to  local  application,  while  the 
House  concerns  itself  with  the  local  application  of  a  gen- 
eral principle,  rather  than  with  its  general  aspect,  mat- 
ters of  State  interest  are  fairly  balanced  between  the 
House  and  the  Senate. 

This  principle  has  been  lost  sight  of  by  the  Assembly 
at  times,  and  its  functions  have  been  disturbed,  if  not 
usurped,  by  other  bodies,  largely  corporations,  in  con- 
sequence. When  it  is  lost  sight  of,  that  oblivion  results 
in  two  symptoms,  both  of  them  distressing  in  the  high- 
est degree.  One  is  the  party  vote,  and  the  other  is  dis- 
guised special  legislation. 

The  party  vote  is  an  indication  of  helplessness,  be- 
cause it  is  determined  by  the  party  and  not  by  the  merits 
of  the  case.  It  is  avowedly  an  indication  and  an  admis- 
sion of  feebleness  when  a  party  vote  must  be  taken  on  any 
measure.  For  it  is  evident  that  a  measure,  unless  it  re- 
fer to  the  working  of  party  machinery,  cannot  be  a  po- 
litical measure  and  therefore  demand  a  "party  vote." 

For  instance,  a  civil  service  bill  cannot  be  a  party 
measure,  since  it  is  designed  to  operate  against  party 
preferences,  or  "plums"  or  "spoils;"  a  potable  water 
commission  bill  is  not  a  party  measure,  since  water  is 
neither  Republican  nor  Democratic,  but  a  public  neces- 


HOUSE    OF    ASSEMBLY  87 

sity.  A  party  vote  on  any  measure  of  this  kind  simply 
indicates  that  those  voting  are,  for  some  reason,  not 
guided  by  the  import  and  merit  of  the  measure  itself, 
but  by  some  influence,  partizan  or  otherwise,  which  can- 
not properly  be  considered  part  of  the  machinery  re- 
quired for  legislation.  Thus  the  party  vote  is  an  indica- 
tion of  weakness  and  of  aberration  of  function  to  be  de- 
plored. 

In  the  same  way,  disguised  special  legislation  arises 
from  improper  functioning  on  the  part  of  the  House. 
The  House  feels  and  intuitively  knows  that  it  represents 
local  applications  of  the  law.  It  takes  its  first  step  in 
the  wrong  direction  when  it  confuses  the  "local  applica- 
tion of  the  law"  with  "local  interests."  This  is  a  source 
of  confusion  in  many  instances  altogether  pardonable, 
yet  in  each  instance  confusion.  For  instance,  let  us  say, 
that  ice  is  harvested  on  a  series  of  lakes  in  the  State.  The 
Assembly  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  various  local  com- 
panies that  cut  the  ice.  It  is  not  concerned  with  them 
directly,  large  as  the  temptation  may  be  to  be  so  con- 
cerned, especially  with  the  member  from  the  locality  in- 
volved. But  the  House  is  concerned  with  the  applica- 
tion of  all  general  laws  of  health  and  transportation  to 
any  specific  locality.  For  ice  is  sometimes  cut  from 
ponds  unfit  for  such  operations,  or  from  other  bodies  of 
water  where  the  laws  of  health  demand  action  or  inter- 
ference— and  advantages  are  taken  by  the  "common  car- 
riers" of  certain  localities,  which  advantages  work  un- 
fairly for  one  or  the  other  of  such  localities. 

It  is  the  function  of  the  House  to  see  that  the  laws  are 
in  such  shape  as  to  be  applicable  in  such  instances  and  in 
such  active  enforcement,  as  to  work  equity  between  lo- 
calities. This  latter  has  not  as  yet  been  recognized  as 
part  of  legislative  activity,  because  of  a  certain  faint 


88  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

outer  resemblance  to  the  executive  function.  But  con- 
sultation on  the  part  of  a  House  committee  with  sheriffs 
of  counties,  with  members  of  the  Board  of  Freeholders, 
with  foremen  or  committees  of  grand  juries  will  reveal 
instances  in  every  way  plentiful  where  legislation  is  re- 
quired either  in  new  or  modified  form. 

The  aloofness  of  Legislatures  works  mischief.  This 
aloofness  is  perfectly  natural,  since  it  is  part  of  our 
American  spirit  not  to  interfere  with  the  other  man,  and 
the  Assembly  feels  that  it  has  no  desire  to  interfere  with 
the  sheriff,  or  with  the  freeholder,  or  with  the  grand 
jury;  but  consultation  is  not  interference,  and  confer- 
ence begets  wisdom.  The  application  of  the  law  to  local 
needs  requires  a  knowledge  of  local  needs,  which  can  best 
be  obtained  through  local  officials. 

In  the  evolution  of  this  thought  we  naturally  and 
readily  reach  the  peculiar  thing  called  "general  legisla- 
tion," but  really  special  legislation  thinly  disguised  un- 
der the  garb  of  ostensible  generalization.  For  the  Legis- 
lature early  conceived  the  perfectly  true  thought  that 
special  legislation  is  unwise,  and  unhealthy,  and  that  it 
is  out  of  place  for  the  Legislature  to  legislate  at  the  cap- 
itol  of  the  State  for  specific  localities,  and  from  the  cap- 
ital city  tell  folk  what  they  are  to  do  in  their  local  work. 
This  is  so  directly  and  palpably  interference,  that  it  is 
brooked  neither  by  the  legislator  nor  by  those  legislated 
for. 

Yet  local  demands  are  so  urgent,  that  every  Legisla- 
ture sooner  or  later  takes  up  distinctly  local  issues  under 
a  fictitiously  generalized  head.  If,  for  instance,  it  wants 
to  legislate  for  Jersey  City  or  Newark,  it  knows  that 
there  are  only  two  cities  in  the  State  which  have  the  quo- 
ta of  population  cited  for  these  two  cities.  The  Legis- 
lature, therefore,  devises  a  classification  of  cities  into  four 


HOUSE    OF    ASSEMBLY  89 

kinds  and  puts  Newark  and  Jersey  City  into  the  first 
class,  and  then  legislates  ad  libitum  for  "cities  of  the 
first  class."  That  means  that  it  is  legislating  for  Newark 
and  Jersey  City.  It  is,  in  most  instances,  doing  things 
which  these  two  cities  should  in  reality  do  for  themselves. 
It  may  do  this  at  the  request  of  one  or  both  of  these 
cities,  but  why  the  request?  What  possible  reason  can 
there  be  for  Newark  and  Jersey  City  going  to  Trenton 
to  ask  permission  to  do  certain  things  entirely  within 
their  own  premises,  and,  in  almost  every  instance,  entire- 
ly within  their  province  and  jurisdiction? 

If  we  go  back  far  enough  to  seek  for  the  origin  of  this 
thinly  disguised  legislation,  essentially  special  but  osten- 
sibly general,  we  will  find  it  to  be  the  same  as  that  of  the 
party  legislation  spoken  of  above.  For  in  those  earlier 
days  of  the  Legislature,  when  things  were  not  as  open 
and  above  board  as  there  is  an  effort  to  make  them  now, 
the  balance  of  power  was  acutely  or  delicately  poised 
between  the  two  great  parties,  and  members  of  the  House 
could  utilize  the  party  vote  for  the  passing  of  measures 
or  for  the  killing  of  measures.  Under  a  corrupt  regime 
it  was  quite  natural  that  men  of  little  moral  force  and  of 
feeble  intellectual  stamen  should  go  to  persons  interested 
in  this  or  that  measure  and  say  to  them :  "What  is  there 
in  this,  if  it  goes  through?" 

Not  only  would  many  politicians  do  this  thing,  but 
they  would  devise  methods  of  conducting  the  legislative 
business,  whereby  it  became  necessary  for  all  manner  of 
legislation  to  pass  through  their  hands,  so  that  they 
might  be  enabled  to  levy  toll  in  its  passing.  It  was  to 
their  interest  to  have  everything  come  to  Trenton — to 
compel  every  city,  town  or  borough  to  bring  its  matters 
to  Trenton.  It  consequently  became  a  matter  of  assidu- 
ous cultivation,  this  general  impression  deeply  made  up- 


90  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

on  the  mind  of  the  ordinary  citizen,  that  he  must  go  to 
Trenton  to  have  things  done  for  him.  Absurd  as  the 
proposition  is  on  the  face  of  it,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  it 
seems  never  to  have  aroused  a  distinctly  intellectual  proc- 
ess which  could  be  traced  in  the  open.  Meekly  and  quietly 
have  the  citizens  of  the  State  submitted  for  years  to  this 
unintelligent  paternalism,  until  now  at  last  the  "initiative 
and  referendum,"  the  "home  rule,"  the  "local  option" 
idea  is  beginning  to  stir  with  sufficient  vigor  to  give  one 
the  impression  that  the  mass  of  citizens  has  tired  of  this 
process,  which  in  its  inception  was  utterly  and  disgust- 
ingly mercenary  and  which  has  lent  itself  to  little  else 
since. 

These  two  faults  or  shortcomings  the  House  must 
speedily  correct  in  order  to  complete  the  list  of  its 
achievements.  Its  list  of  achievements  will  be  confined 
entirely  to  the  catalogue  of  such  things  as  can  be  and 
must  be  accomplished  locally  by  the  application  of  gen- 
eral laws.  And  to  this  task  should  the  Assembly  bend  it- 
self forthwith.  The  incorporation  of  cities,  the  annex- 
ation of  territory  to  boroughs,  to  townships,  to  cities, 
the  consolidation  of  towns  and  other  local  conditions 
should  be  made  the  subject  of  thorough  investigation  and 
early  study,  so  that  no  specific  prescription  may  come 
from  Trenton  under  the  guise  of  general  legislation. 
General  legislation  means  in  such  cases  the  application  of 
general  laws,  of  the  laws  of  population,  of  floating  and 
sessile  population,  of  mutual  interests  between  munici- 
palities, of  the  transfer  of  desirable  or  undesirable  con- 
ditions from  one  municipality  to  another ;  all  these  points 
and  many  more  require  careful  research  before  any  form 
of  legislation  is  attempted  at  all. 

The  issuance  of  bonds  by  municipalities,  the  ratio  in 
which  such  an  issuance  shall  stand  to  the  assessed  valu- 


HOUSE    OF    ASSEMBLY  91 

ations  of  property  in  the  municipality,  the  amount  of 
help  that  might  be  borne  by  the  county,  if  it  be  a  ques- 
tion of  roads,  all  such  matters  are  perfectly  and  legiti- 
mately within  the  province  of  the  Assembly  and  will  swell 
the  list  of  its  achievements  materially. 

The  remedying  of  certain  evils  which  are  general,  such 
things  and  conditions  as  militate  against  the  health  and 
welfare  of  the  people  of  the  State,  when  present  or  con- 
fined to  certain  localities — the  unfairness  of  certain  trade 
combinations,  both  of  labor  and  of  capital  (for  some  of 
both  classes  are  equally  unfair) — the  inequity  of  trans- 
portation, the  moral  obligation  of  a  common-carrier, 
when  it  forgets  that  it  is  a  common-carrier  and  is  tol- 
erated in  its  operations  only  as  such — the  basis  upon 
which  revocations  of  charter  and  franchise  rights  may 
be  made  to  rest  in  this  or  that  municipality,  the  court  to 
which  questions  thus  arising  may  be  or  are  to  be  carried, 
the  limits  of  activity  in  the  matter  to  be  imposed  upon 
local  authorities,  upon  grand  juries,  sheriffs  and  other 
county  authorities,  all  such  matters  are  subject  for  most 
careful  consideration  on  the  part  of  the  House,  because 
it  is  by  nature  the  guardian  of  local  interests,  and  be- 
cause, again  by  the  nature  of  the  case,  it  can  conserve 
these  interests  fairly  and  adequately  only  by  the  appli- 
cation of  general  laws  to  local  conditions,  and  never  by 
the  enactment  of  localized  or  special  laws  under  a  ve- 
neer of  generality  which  deceives  no  one  and  is  rarely 
just  or  fair. 


92  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 


CHAPTER  X 

THE    MACHINERY    OF    GOVERNMENT    AS    ILLUSTRATED    BY 
THE  COUNTY  IN  ITS  BOARD  OF  CHOSEN  FREEHOLDERS. 

IN  the  past  chapters  we  have  glanced  at  the  general 
forms  of  government  of  the  United  States  and  of  a 
single  State  as  to  deliberative  and  legislative  bodies. 
We  come  now  to  the  machinery  of  government.  To  de- 
scribe this  for  study  purposes  and  to  take  it  through  the 
five  forms  which  it  assumes,  would  be  a  five-fold  repeti- 
tion. It  will  suffice  to  take  any  one  of  the  five,  and  the 
form  chosen  is  that  of  the  county  because  naturally  it 
stands  about  in  the  centre  and  is  sufficiently  compact  and 
at  the  same  time  sufficiently  flexible  to  illustrate  all  that 
is  necessary  for  the  student  of  civics. 

There  are  altogether  five  forms  of  government,  or 
rather  of  governmental  machinery.  First,  the  govern- 
ment of  the  United  States,  with  the  President  at  the  head, 
his  Cabinet  or  National  family  grouped  immediately 
about  him,  the  two  houses  of  Congress  at  his  right  and 
left,  and  the  detailed  machinery  of  government  reaching 
out  in  all  directions  from  these  three  central  groups.  We 
are,  as  the  reader  sees,  taking  the  President  and  his  im- 
mediate Cabinet  together  as  a  single  group.  This  as- 
sumption is  perfectly  tenable,  even  in  the  case  of  so  pos- 
itive a  man  as  President  Roosevelt.  His  Cabinet  is  his 
own  choice  and  consequently  it  may  be  assumed  to  be  at 
perfect  accord  with  him,  no  matter  how  much  or  how  lit- 
tle at  variance  either  or  both  houses  of  Congress  may  be 
at  any  one  time.  From  these  three  groups  radiate  sev- 


CHOSEN    FREEHOLDERS  93 

eral  systems,  each  in  a  sense  independent,  yet  each  in- 
tertwined closely  with  the  other.  There  is  a  system  of 
functions  for  each  of  which  one  member  of  the  Cabinet 
stands. 

Thus  there  is  the  huge  system  of  mail  delivery,  the 
postoffice,  which  ramifies  into  the  remotest  corners  of  the 
land,  and  at  its  head  a  Postmaster-General.  He  is  a 
member  of  the  Cabinet.  Then  there  is  the  relationship 
in  which  the  Nation  stands  with  other  nations.  At  the 
head  of  this  function  stands  a  man  who  is  called  the  head 
of  the  Department  of  State  (originally  called  "Foreign 
Affairs").  He  is  a  member  of  the  Cabinet.  Then  there 
is  the  man  who  has  charge  of  the  Navy.  He  is  a  member 
of  the  Cabinet.  In  the  same  way  there  is  the  official  in 
charge  of  Army  affairs;  the  official  in  charge  of  the 
money  or  financial  affairs  of  the  government ;  the  official 
in  charge  of  the  Department  of  Commerce  and  Labor; 
the  official  in  charge  of  the  welfare  of  the  farmer,  that 
is,  the  Department  of  Agriculture,  and,  finally,  the  At- 
torney-General, who  may  be  regarded  as  the  representa- 
tive of  the  judiciary.  This  group  of  men  is  called  the 
"Cabinet"  not  only  in  this  country  but  in  several  others, 
such  as  in  England  and  France,  though  the  different 
members  in  each  of  these  countries  may  stand  for  slightly 
different  branchings  and  co-ordinations  of  the  govern- 
ment service.  The  general  scheme  of  government  under 
this  form  is  that  of  the  "commission,"  such  as  is  now  also 
advocated  for  cities,  an  advocacy  chiefly  instigated  by 
the  successful  introduction  of  the  commission  system  in 
Galveston  and  Houston,  Tex.,  Des  Moines,  Iowa,  and 
other  cities. 

To  the  thoughtful  reader  it  will  instantly  appear  that 
this  method  of  procedure  is  one  of  the  most  efficient,  if 
not  the  most  efficient,  which  could  have  been  devised.  It 


94  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

gathers  the  reins  of  government  together  into  the  central 
group  of  control,  and  works  and  always  has  worked 
most  efficiently.  It  is  presumably  also  the  oldest  form  of 
government  with  which  we  are  familiar. 

Impelled  by  the  evident  efficacy  of  this  form,  the  in- 
dividual States  have  adopted  a  method  very  similar  to  the 
Federal  one.  The  Governor,  at  the  head  of  affairs,  is  sur- 
rounded by  a  similar  group  of  men,  who  are  his  imme- 
diate State  family.  The  arrangement  is  not  so  compact 
as  that  of  the  Federal  Government,  but  the  group  com- 
prising the  Secretary  of  State,  the  State  Treasurer,  State 
Comptroller,  the  Attorney-General,  the  Major-General, 
the  Commissioner  of  Banking  and  Insurance,  the  Clerk 
of  the  Supreme  Court,  the  Superintendent  of  Public  In- 
struction, and  one  or  two  others,  is  evidently  a  group 
modeled  upon  the  same  pattern  as  that  of  the  Federal 
Cabinet.  In  general,  it  is  the  plan  of  having  the  heads 
of  departments  grouped  into  an  immediate  official  fam- 
ily about  the  Governor,  and,  in  the  case  of  the  State, 
flanked  upon  the  right  by  the  Senate  and  on  the  left  by 
the  House  of  Assembly.  And  from  this  centre  radiate 
the  various  State  functions,  each  along  its  several  line, 
very  much  as  does  the  Federal  machinery  of  government. 

After  the  State  comes  the  smaller  type,  namely  the 
county,  and  after  that  the  city,  and  then  the  town  or 
township,  under  which  title  is  here  included  the  borough 
for  convenience  sake.  In  each  of  these  smaller  groups 
there  is  a  chief  officer,  with  a  group  of  officials  about  him 
constituting  the  immediate  official  family,  and  with  minor 
functions  and  functionaries  radiating  in  all  directions.  In 
the  case  of  the  county,  the  central  group  is  flanked  on 
the  right  by  the  Board  of  Chosen  Freeholders,  and  on  the 
left  by  the  grand  jury,  which  because  of  the  failure  on 
the  part  of  those  directly  involved  to  see  this  feature  of 


CHOSEN    FREEHOLDERS  95 

grouping,  has  deteriorated  into  a  position  little  less  than 
anomalous.  In  the  city  the  Mayor  has  grouped  about 
him  his  various  heads  of  departments,  and  is  flanked  by 
the  Select  and  Common  Council  in  cities  where  this  form 
is  adopted,  or  by  council  and  some  other  official  body, 
like,  for  instance,  a  Board  of  Works,  where  other  forms 
are  adopted. 

The  town,  borough,  village  or  township  follows  the 
same  method  of  procedure  through  its  various  officials, 
but,  of  course,  in  a  smaller  and  more  restricted  way. 

In  general  the  reader  will  now  see  why  the  Galveston 
plan  of  running  cities  by  commissions  has  been  advoca- 
ted, and  why  it  has  been  suggested  to  constitute  official 
bodies  of  the  heads  of  departments,  such  as  for  instance 
the  modification  of  the  State  Board  of  Health  in  some 
such  way  as  to  have  it  presently  constituted  of  the  heads 
of  departments  of  State  functions,  related  in  some  way 
to  the  health  and  sanitation  of  the  State,  and  including 
the  heads  of  the  Sewerage  Commission,  of  the  Charities 
and  Corrections,  so  far  as  it  concerns  itself  with  the  wel- 
fare of  the  sick  and  the  ailing,  the  head  of  the  Tubercu- 
losis Commission,  the  heads  of  those  bodies  which  control 
the  various  medical  schools,  and  representatives  of  the 
plumbers  and  the  undertakers  of  the  State.  Centraliza- 
tion of  this  kind  is  wholly  helpful,  and  it  can  be  normal- 
ly introduced  in  the  course  of  a  few  years,  if  the  appoint- 
ive power  will  hold  a  scheme  such  as  this  under  advise- 
ment and  consent  to  discontinue  the  haphazard  method 
of  appointment  now  in  vogue. 

Revert  we  now  to  the  general  form  of  government  of 
a  county  as  a  fair  illustration  of  the  mechanism  of  gov- 
ernment. As  heretofore,  we  take  the  county  of  Essex  as 
a  pattern,  as  in  general  we  have  taken  the  State  of  New 
Jersey  as  a  pattern,  which  in  either  case  the  student  may 


96  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

modify  at  his  or  her  pleasure  to  fit  any  other  county  in 
this  or  other  States,  and  which  he  or  she  may  further 
modify  in  tracing  similarity  of  office  and  function  as  may 
be  required.  Thus  a  series  of  names  like  this — (Federal) 
Secretary  of  State,  (State)  secretary  of  State,  county 
clerk,  township  clerk,  are  evidently  the  names  of  the 
same  office  as  it  dwindles  away  from  its  largest  and  most 
prominent  form  to  its  least  form.  The  office  remains 
the  same  throughout,  being  that  of  the  man  whose  busi- 
ness it  is  to  keep  the  records  of  the  department,  large  or 
small,  assigned  to  him,  and  in  civic  lines,  the  man  most 
familiar  with  the  detailed  working  of  the  machinery  of 
government. 

Take  another  similar  series — Secretary  of  the  Treas- 
ury, State  treasurer,  county  collector,  (city)  tax  collect- 
or, township  collector.  This  is  evidently  the  office  of  the 
man  to  whom  is  entrusted  the  care  of  the  financial  sys- 
tem, large  or  small,  involved  in  the  section  of  the  gov- 
ernmental machinery  for  which  he  stands.  Other  series 
of  names  are  left  to  the  student  for  "original  research" 
and  for  the  elaboration  of  such  thought,  suggestion  and 
practical  application  as  may  suggest  themselves.  The 
county  is  thus  organized.  There  is  elected  a  Board  of 
Chosen  Freeholders.  They  are  called  "chosen"  because 
they  are  elected.  They  are  called  freeholders  because  they 
are  "free" — that  is,  for  a  life  tenure  without  (feudal)  re- 
striction. In  feudal  days  there  were  three  forms  of  hold- 
ing, when  the  term  "freehold"  was  first  devised.  There 
was  a  lease-hold,  in  which  case  the  feudal  lord  permitted 
some  one,  usually  a  serf,  to  live  on  some  part  of  his  do- 
main for  an  indefinite  period,  or  until  he  should  choose 
to  shift  him  from  place  to  place  or  sell  him  or  manumit 
him.  Then  there  was  a  "copy-hold,"  in  which  case  the 
tenant,  usually  a  vassal,  subject  to  military  service  or  not, 


CHOSEN    FREEHOLDERS  97 

as  the  case  might  be,  was  permitted  to  hold  a  certain 
piece  of  property  for  a  definite  period  of  time  and  was 
secure  in  his  holding  from  any  interference  on  the  part 
of  his  feudal  lord,  so  long  as  the  service  exacted  was  fur- 
nished. And  finally  there  was  the  "free-hold,"  in  which 
the  feudal  lord  granted  the  tenant  a  "free  brief,"  which 
meant  absolute  possessorship,  without  restraint  on  the 
part  of  the  landlord,  for  life,  that  is,  for  the  life  of  the 
tenant.  Sometimes  it  was  conditioned  by  the  life  of  his 
wife,  including  the  term  of  her  life,  should  she  outlive 
him.  Hence  the  word  "freeholder"  was  associated  with  a 
man  who  not  only  held  his  property  "free"  or  in  "fee," 
as  it  was  afterward  called,  but  who  also  was  independent 
of  the  feudal  lord,  being  neither  serf  nor  vassal.  The 
term  came  to  America  in  the  natural  course  of  events,  and 
here  it  has  had  two  ideas,  that  of  "freeman"  not  "slave" 
up  to  about  1845  or  1850,  while  slavery  was  an  unop- 
posed American  institution,  and  that  of  actual  owner  of 
property  in  "fee  simple."  The  latter  is  the  only  one  now 
retained. 

The  Board  of  Freeholders  ( in  some  cases  called  County 
Commission)  organizes  by  selecting  a  director,  who  is  the 
head  of  the  body  and  who  stands  in  the  place  of  presi- 
dent. The  group  of  officials,  gathered  about  this  centre, 
is  a  supervisor  elected  by  the  people,  a  clerk,  a  county 
physician,  a  county  collector,  a  county  auditor,  a  county 
counsel  and  a  county  engineer,  together  with  the  super- 
intendents, wardens  and  physicians  of  the  various  coun- 
ty institutions,  in  charge  of  and  under  the  care  of  the 
Board  of  Freeholders.  That  this  list  is  subject  to  modi- 
fication according  to  the  size,  location  and  import  of 
the  county  concerned  is  evident.  That  there  may  be 
changes  in  title  and  substitution,  such  as  "coroner"  for 
"county  physician,"  is  also  evident.  The  effort  here  is 


98  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

to  give  a  general  scheme,  according  to  which  the  element 
of  machinery  at  large  may  be  made  subject  of  study. 

The  student  is  asked  to  exercise  due  care  in  adjust- 
ing the  smaller  scheme  here  given  to  any  larger  or  yet 
smaller  scheme,  which  he  may  make  the  subject  of  his  in- 
vestigation. The  functions  of  the  County  Board  of 
Freeholders  can  be  transferred  as  rapidly  to  one  of  the 
other  forms  of  governmental  machinery  as  could  the 
titles  of  offices.  Thus  the  Board  of  Freeholders  has 
charge  of  the  roads  of  a  county. 

That  the  State  has  a  similar  department  is  evident; 
that  the  Federal  Government  has  a  similar  department  is 
not  so  clear  until  it  has  been  decided  in  what  final  attitude 
the  Federal  Government  shall  stand  toward  the  highways 
of  the  country,  both  those  with  rails  and  those  without. 
When  the  atmosphere  is  cleared  in  this  matter,  we  may 
finally  decide  that  the  Federal  Government  stands  related 
to  the  highways  of  the  country,  both  railways,  canals, 
navigable  rivers  and  high  roads  (all  these  being  high- 
ways for  public  use  and  for  the  transportation  of  passen- 
gers and  freight  at  the  disposition  and  convenience  of 
the  general  public)  somewhat  in  the  same  way  as  a  Coun- 
ty Board  of  Freeholders  stands  related  to  the  roads  in 
that  county,  in  which  case  there  is  responsibility  as  to  the 
maintenance  of  the  road  in  good  condition,  the  proper 
bridging  of  interruptions  of  the  surface  level  of  the  road, 
and  the  making  of  the  road  traversable  within  reason  at 
all  seasons.  That  the  Board  is  to  do  all  of  this,  or  that  it 
may  share  the  doing  of  it  with  other  bodies  corporate 
both  official  and  private  is  a  detail.  Hence  the  student,  if 
he  desires  to  make  application  of  any  one  general  princi- 
ple, like  this,  to  other  bodies  is  asked  to  think  along  con- 
secutive lines  of  ordinary  analysis  and  he  will  have  at 
hand  sufficient  material  for  all  purposes. 


CHOSEN    FREEHOLDERS  99 

If  the  application  be  made  to  a  smaller  body,  say  a  city 
or  a  town,  the  relation  of  the  Board  of  Freeholders  to  the 
roads  of  the  county  is  duplicated  in  the  relation  in  some 
cases  of  the  Board  of  Aldermen  or  the  Common  Council 
of  a  city  (which  is  the  same  thing)  to  the  streets  of  that 
city.  The  facilities  of  this  method  of  study  will  be  in- 
stantly apparent  to  every  one.  If  we  can  get  the  rela- 
tionship of  a  governing  body,  of  city,  of  county,  of 
State,  of  the  Federal  Government  to  any  one  function, 
say  to  the  highways  (roads,  streets,  railways,  canals, 
navigable  rivers  and  streams)  into  the  same  general  form, 
we  have  gained  an  advantage  not  otherwise  obtainable. 

In  the  second  place  the  student  is  warned  not  to  give 
the  Board  of  Freeholders  too  large  a  place  in  the  line  of 
importance.  The  fact  that  any  one  particular  body  is 
used  as  an  illustration  in  this  way  may  leave  in  the  mind 
of  the  reader  a  sense  of  importance  which  cannot  be  prop- 
erly attached  to  the  institution  under  consideration. 
Every  one  will  readily  see  that  the  Board  of  Chosen  Free- 
holders in  some  small  county  may  be  a  very  much  less  im- 
portant body  than  the  Common  Council  of  some  great 
city,  which  contains  a  number  of  inhabitants  possibly  lar- 
ger than  that  of  the  small  county.  The  Board  of  Free- 
holders is  here  used  simply  as  a  concrete  illustration  of  all 
forms  of  government  machinery,  for  "practical  citizen- 
ship" purposes,  and  it  is  left  to  the  reader  and  the  stu- 
dent to  make  such  applications  of  the  general  principles 
along  the  lines  indicated  in  this  chapter  as  will  make  it 
serve  the  purpose  for  which  it  was  designed,  namely,  to 
give  a  distinct  idea  of  governmental  machinery  at  large, 
obviating  the  necessity  of  going  into  different  explana- 
tions of  the  same  thing  in  its  various  forms. 

In  charge  of  the  freeholders  are  the  following  matters : 
The  tax  levy  for  the  county,  which  is  important,  since  it 


100  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

largely  influences  the  rate  and  method  of  taxations  in  the 
boroughs  and  municipalities  included  within  its  borders ; 
the  roads  of  the  county,  involving  the  building  of  roads, 
of  bridges,  and  in  some  instances  the  method  of  applica- 
tion of  convict  or  free  labor,  since  in  some  cases  convict 
labor  is  employed  on  the  roads;  the  county  institutions, 
usually  a  jail,  a  penitentiary,  an  almshouse  or  poorhouse, 
a  hospital,  in  some  cases  an  isolation  hospital  and  an  in- 
sane asylum ;  the  public  buildings,  usually  a  courthouse 
at  the  county  seat  and  such  other  buildings  as  may  be 
necessary  to  house  the  various  functions  of  the  county. 

In  order  to  meet  the  requirements  of  this  work  the 
board  groups  itself  into  committees.  As  a  specimen  of  the 
nature  of  this  grouping  I  cite  the  titles  of  committees  in 
the  Board  of  Chosen  Freeholders  of  Essex  County,  which 
will  convey  definitely  the  general  and  the  local  nature  of 
the  work.  The  committee  titles  are:  Finance,  County 
Hospitals,  County  Prisons,  Public  Buildings,  Roads, 
Speedway,  Jail  Discharge,  Newark  Free  Bridges,  Sta- 
tionery, Belleville  Free  Bridge,  Nutley  Free  Bridge,  Pub- 
lications, Official  Bonds,  Statutory  Payments,  Auditing, 
Legal  Questions,  Legislation.  A  glance  at  this  list  will 
instantly  explain  the  general  method  of  the  subdivision 
of  work. 

That  this  work  involves  the  burden  of  many  concrete 
and  abstract  features,  ranging  from  the  fairness  of  a 
tax  levy  to  the  question  of  prisoners  wearing  stripes,  is 
evident  without  comment. 


PART  II 
THE  FORCE 

CHAPTER  XI 

THE  FORCES  THAT  RUN  THE  MECHANISM  OF  GOVERNMENT 
AND    THEIR    DUAL    MANIFESTATION. 

IN  a  vague  way  we  speak  of  "public  opinion"  and  of 
"public  sentiment"  as  though  they  were  unfathom- 
able and  unstudied  things.    But  that  is  an  untenable 
view.     They  are  quite  studiable  and  definable  things. 
They  are  human  forces,  and  as  such  as  much  subject  to 
study  as  any  other  force.    And  the  best  working  theory 
for  such  study  lies  along  the  following  lines. 

In  the  first  place,  the  student  who  has  followed  the 
previous  chapters  in  an  appreciative  manner  has  noted 
that  we  have  thus  far  concerned  ourselves  with  the  ma- 
chinery of  government.  The  public  mind,  that  inerrant 
and  intuitive  Something,  which  I  prefer  to  call  the  Race 
Mind,  has  always  called  this  part  of  government  the 
"Machine."  That  the  people  at  large  have  qualified  this 
"Machine"  and  have  called  it  the  "Republican"  machine 
or  the  "Democratic"  machine  in  no  wise  interferes  with 
the  fact  that  the  Race  Mind  has  quite  properly  and  with- 
out error  perceived  that  the  body  politic  is  a  "Machine." 
There  is  no  doubt  of  that  and  there  is  no  harm  in  it. 
The  aggregate  needs  a  body  for  the  same  reason  that  the 
individual  needs  a  body.  And  the  body  of  the  aggregate 

101 


102  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

is  a  piece  of  mechanism  of  the  same  order  as  the  body  of 
the  individual,  a  more  or  less  brilliantly  conceived  piece 
of  machinery,  according  to  the  more  or  less  vicious  inter- 
ference of  individuals  with  divine  laws.  This  piece  of 
machinery  may  be  called  "Body  Politic,"  it  may  be  called 
"Organization,"  or  it  may  be  called  "Machine,"  since  it 
is  all  three  of  these  things,  and  since  in  this  sense  all  three 
are  synonymous  and  essential  to  the  carrying  out  of  the 
purposes  of  the  government. 

Having  described  the  machine,  it  is  proper  to  turn  to 
the  force  or  the  forces  which  run  the  machine.  We  have 
grown  men  we  call  "leaders,"  "bosses,"  "demagogues" 
and  so  forth,  according  either  to  the  exigencies  of  the 
case,  or  to  the  humor  we  are  in  at  the  time  who  are  sup- 
posed to  run  the  machine.  But  in  either  case  we  are  de- 
ceived by  appearances.  Men  do  not  run  the  machinery 
of  government.  It  is  run  by  ulterior,  or  rather  by  su- 
perior forces,  which  men  call  again  by  another  series  of 
names,  such  as  destiny,  Providence,  God,  and  so  forth, 
but  which  for  the  purposes  of  these  chapters  is  called 
the  "Human  Force,"  sometimes  the  "Divine  Human 
Force,"  and  sometimes  simply  the  "Race  Mind."  And 
it  is  to  this  concept,  and  to  the  study  of  it  that  we  now 
apply  ourselves. 

That  men  do  not  run  the  machinery  of  government  in 
any  sense  but  the  sense  of  appearances  is  evident  when  we 
dissect  any  similar  sentence  in  another  domain  of  human 
ken  and  activity.  Take  the  sentence,  "The  Western  far- 
mer grows  grain  for  all  the  world."  Stripped  of  its 
attributes  it  is,  "the  farmer  grows  grain."  Now,  in  what 
sense  does  a  farmer  grow  grain  ?  He  takes  in  hand  a  cer- 
tain quantity  of  grain  previously  grown.  That  is,  he 
starts  with  a  certain  proposition,  which  has  been  previ- 
ously produced.  He  prepares  the  soil,  plows,  harrows 


DUAL    FORCES  103 

and  breaks  the  clods.  He  does  not  produce  the  soil,  any 
more  than  he  produced  the  original  grain.  Guided  by  a 
knowledge  of  seasons  and  of  climate,  which  he  borrows 
from  the  memory  of  the  racemind,  either  from  a  tradition 
of  his  predecessors,  or  from  books,  in  which  that  experi- 
ence has  been  recorded,  he  submits  himself  with  more  or 
less  skill  to  the  requirements  of  these  laws.  He  has  not 
produced  these  laws,  since  he  has  had  nothing  to  do  with 
the  inclination  of  the  earth's  axis,  which  does  produce 
them,  and  he  was  not  there  when  that  inclination  swayed 
into  position  ages  and  ages  ago.  The  more  skill  he  ex- 
ercises in  this  adaptation  to  a  law,  which  he  did  not  pro- 
duce, the  better  will  be  the  crops  he  "grows."  The  seed 
falls  into  the  ground.  It  decays.  And  then  the  miracle 
of  growth  takes  place.  It  is  multiplied,  as  believers  in 
the  Church  and  its  tenets  honestly  hold,  by  the  same 
hand  and  the  same  agencies,  which  are  several  times  in- 
troduced into  the  Bible  narrative,  as  multiplying  bread 
both  in  the  Old  Testament  stories  of  the  wonderful  feed- 
ing of  the  multitudes  of  Jews  in  the  desert,  and  in  their 
New  Testament  replicas,  where  the  five  thousand  and 
the  four  thousand  are  fed. 

It  matters  not  so  much  what  we  make  of  these  remark- 
able stories  historically  or  scientifically,  but  rather  that 
we  look  upon  them  as  rather  startling,  though  in  the  ul- 
timate analysis  altogether  logical,  statements  of  an  actual 
fact,  namely,  that  the  farmer  does  not  "grow"  grain  in 
the  sense  of  producing  something  by  his  own  volition  ab- 
solutely and  only.  In  every  sense  he  only  helps  to  grow 
grain,  if  he  does  anything.  The  grain  grows  from  the 
co-ordination  of  a  series  of  interior  and  exterior  forces, 
moving  under  definite  and  perfectly  definable  laws,  over 
which  he  has  absolutely  no  control,  but  to  which  he  can 
learn  to  adapt  himself  with  more  or  less  skill  and  success. 


104  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

There  are  interior  forces,  which  through  mysterious  co- 
ordinations of  chemical  substances  and  of  geometric 
forms,  probably,  multiply  his  bread  for  him,  and  there 
are  external  forces  which  check  that  growth  and  in  many 
instances  destroy  it.  The  occult  forces  of  chemical  com- 
bination, of  geometric  arrangement  and  so  forth,  are, 
generally  speaking,  favorable  to  growth ;  those  of  exter- 
nal influence,  such  as  winds,  frosts,  fire  and  the  locust, 
are,  generally  speaking,  designed  to  retard  growth,  and 
may  be,  with  due  caution,  considered  as  checking  and  re- 
tarding growth.  I  say  "with  due  caution"  for  the  sake 
of  what  I  shall  have  presently  to  say  of  "conservatism." 

If  we  transfer  this  imagery  to  the  body  politic,  we  will 
note  that  men  run  the  machinery  of  government  in  the 
same  sense  in  which  the  farmer  grows  grain ;  that  is,  they 
help  run  it.  But  in  reality  more  depends  upon  the  human 
forces  back  of  the  men  than  upon  the  men,  just  as  more 
depends  upon  the  sun,  the  rain,  the  soil  and  the  element 
of  growth  in  the  grain,  than  depends  upon  the  farmer. 
Take  any  selection  of  historic  events  you  please  and  ask 
yourself  fairly  the  question,  "Did  men  do  this?"  and 
your  answer  will  always  be,  "In  part,  yes ;  in  toto,  no." 
Did  Lincoln  start  out  with  the  idea  of  freeing  the  slaves  ? 
Did  Cromwell  start  out  with  the  idea  of  the  Long  Parlia- 
ment ?  Did  Galileo  know  that  he  was  laying  the  founda- 
tions of  modern  science?  Did  Robespierre  try  to  abolish 
the  government  of  France  by  the  means  which  afterward 
came  about?  Did  Mark  Hanna  have  the  faintest  idea  of 
what  he  was  about  when  he  tried  to  put  Mr.  Roosevelt  on 
the  shelf  of  the  Vice-Presidency  ?  Did  the  Hycksos  know 
that  they  were  laying  the  foundations  of  the  Aryan  mi- 
gration when  they  invaded  Egypt?  Did  Cincinnatus 
dream  that  he  was  laying  the  foundations  of  an  American 
commonwealth  when  he  left  his  plow?  Did  Aristotle 


DUAL    FORCES  105 

know  that  the  coming  world  would  have  to  turn  again  and 
again  to  his  principles,  as  often  as  they  really  tried  to  get 
at  the  foundations  of  things  ?  I  have  purposely  gathered 
a  haphazard  mass  of  material  together  with  the  intent  of 
showing  that  men  do  not  do  the  running  of  the  machin- 
ery. They  do  part  of  it,  and  not  a  very  large  part,  when 
one  considers  all  the  other  factors  and  forces  at  work. 

Now  let  us  look  at  this  force  which  does  the  larger  part 
of  the  running  of  the  machinery  of  the  body  politic.  The 
philosophers  have  tried  to  find  it,  by  studying  that  body 
itself.  They  have  thought  of  that  body  as  a  huge  hu- 
man unit,  which  is  altogether  wise  and  proper.  They  have 
thought  of  the  telegraph  as  the  nervous  system;  of  the 
circulation  of  money  as  the  circulation  of  blood ;  of  the 
transportation  of  food  supplies  as  being  the  same  in  the 
body  politic  as  in  the  individual  body.  They  have  thought 
of  those  who  work  as  "hands"  and  have  called  them  so, 
when  they  spoke  of  Mr.  So-and-So  as  employing  300 
"hands."  They  have  thought  of  the  men  who  do  the 
thinking  and  the  planning  as  the  "head,"  and  therefore 
speak  of  this  one  or  that  one  as  the  "head"  of  the  concern. 
They  have  thought  of  our  legislative  mechanism  as  the 
"arm"  and  have  called  it  the  "long  arm"  of  the  law.  All 
these  terms  and  thoughts  they  have  culled  from  the  race- 
mind  and  have  therefore  copied  into  them  that  suspicion 
of  inerrancy,  to  which  I  referred  above. 

This  series  of  ideas  does  well  as  a  working  theory,  so 
far  as  the  body  politic  is  concerned,  but  it  leaves  us  un- 
supplied  with  an  idea  of  the  force  which  runs  the  body, 
except  in  so  far  as  it  speaks  of  "public  sentiment"  and 
"public  opinion." 

That  these  two  things  are  forces,  we  recognize  in  the 
common  parlance  of  the  people,  when  we  state  the  fact 
that  "the  House  bowed  to  public  opinion,"  or  that  "the 


106  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

President  was  forced  into  his  present  attitude  by  public 
sentiment."  All  such  sentences  recognize  the  thing  called 
"public  sentiment"  and  "public  opinion"  as  a  force.  The 
question  arises,  are  they  an  actual  force  ?  And  the  answer 
is,  they  are  as  actual  a  force  as  magnetism  or  electricity. 
Trace  the  thought  for  a  moment.  Take  any  other  hu- 
man force.  The  gambling  or  speculative  force.  Does  it 
not  always  act  in  the  same  way,  and  has  it  therefore  not 
an  identity  ?  It  always  makes  people  assume  toward  cer- 
tain things  the  same  attitude.  It  makes  a  man  eager  to 
get  something  for  nothing,  whether  it  be  manifested  in  a 
horse  race,  a  bout  of  fisticuffs,  an  astrological  advertise- 
ment, a  bargain  counter,  or  an  auction  sale  of  express 
goods,  where  you  buy  a  parcel  without  knowing  what  is 
in  it.  All  people  act  alike  under  the  impulse  of  this  force, 
just  as  all  apples  fall  alike  under  the  force  of  gravitation. 
So  with  the  manifestation  of  human  force  called  "puppy 
love."  All  children  act  alike  when  it  strikes  them,  for  the 
same  reason  that  all  dynamoes  act  alike  when  electricity 
strikes  them. 

Take  the  force  of  curiosity.  All  people  do  the  same 
thing  when  somebody  stares  into  the  sky  or  points  into 
it  with  a  stick.  And  then  there's  the  force  of  imitation. 
The  whole  company  yawns  when  one  yawns — the  whole 
congregation  is  inclined  to  cough  when  the  speaker's  voice 
breaks  for  a  moment,  and  the  whole  body  of  people  in  the 
ferryhouse  can  be  made  to  run  around  the  corner  of  the 
ferry  slip  if  one  starts  running  soon  enough  to  be  seen 
by  those  behind,  and  does  it  in  an  interested  and  natural 
manner.  And  when  the  little  boy  hands  the  little  girl, 
his  sister,  an  unusually  large  piece  of  cake  without  direct 
commands  from  his  mother,  she  naturally  says,  "What's 
the  matter  wiv  it?"  because  she  has  intuitively  recognized 
the  activity  of  certain  human  forces,  and  now  recognizes 


DUAL    FORCES  107 

the  fact  that  this  proceeding  runs  counter  to  previous  ex- 
perience. 

Human  forces  have  not  been  sufficiently  studied.  When 
they  are,  they  will  be  found  as  intelligible  and  as  resolv- 
able as  all  others.  It  is  therefore  safe  to  think  of  the 
forces  which  run  the  mechanism  of  government  as  being 
only  partly  represented  by  individuals,  but  rather  and 
more  truly  by  the  aggregate  mentality  of  the  group  of 
people  under  consideration  and  the  force  which  that  ag- 
gregate mentality  exercises. 

If,  now,  we  take  any  physical  force  and  study  it,  we 
find  at  the  very  outset  that  it  manifests  itself  in  a  dual 
form.  Electricity  has  its  negative  and  its  positive  mani- 
festation. Gravitation  has  its  two  manifestations,  which 
we  call  centrifugal  and  centripetal  forces.  We  think  of 
these  two  forces,  one  rushing  outward  from  the  sun  and 
the  other  as  tending  toward  the  sun,  as  holding  the  earth 
in  place  between  them.  A  mighty  wave  of  force  sweeps 
out  from  the  sun  and  would,  if  permitted  to  act  without 
its  curbing  companion  force,  centripetal  force,  rush  the 
universe  into  a  whirl  of  nothingness.  But  it  is  curbed  by 
the  other  side  of  itself,  the  inward  rush  of  force  toward 
the  sun,  and  so  the  globe  spins  quietly  on. 

So  public  opinion  and  public  sentiment  manifests  itself 
in  two  ways.  There  is  a  wild  onward  rush  of  force,  called 
radicalism,  which  desires  to  carry  all  before  it  and  to  rush 
it  all  into  the  dim  and  unknown  future.  But  it  has  its 
companion  force  in  conservatism,  which  tends  to  hold  back 
and  to  revert  to  the  past.  And  with  radicalism  turned 
persistently  to  the  future  and  conservatism  turning  with 
equal  persistency  toward  the  past,  human  society  quietly 
turns  upon  its  axis  of  present  interest,  without  any  of  the 
serious  dangers  forecast  by  the  pessimist,  and  mostly  also 
without  any  of  the  ethic  results  dreamed  of  by  the  opti- 


108  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

mist.  Suffice  it  then  to  think  for  the  present  of  human 
force,  called  "public  sentiment,"  as  a  thing  similar  to 
gravitation,  and  of  radicalism  as  the  centrifugal  force, 
and  of  conservatism  as  the  centripetal  force,  and  we  have 
a  background  upon  which  in  the  next  chapter  we  shall  be 
able  to  paint  a  picture  of  these  two  forms  of  force  and 
of  their  necessity. 


RADICALISM  109 


CHAPTER  XII 

RADICALISM    AS   A    DYNAMIC    FORCE   IN    CITIZENSHIP THE 

ELEMENT  OF  NATURAL  SEQUENCE  IN   REFORMS. 

WHEN  we  speak  of  any  generic  factor  we  usual- 
ly fail  to  allow  for  the  heterogeneousness  of 
the  mass  of  humanity.  No  two  people  are  alike. 
No  group  of  human  beings,  such  as  a  city,  a  State  or  a 
nation,  exists,  which  does  not  include  a  more  or  less  com- 
prehensive collection  of  types. 

When  next  you  hear  or  tell  a  humorous  story  note  the 
manner  in  which  it  is  received  by  the  group.  Take  a 
post-prandial  story.  The  speaker  faces  a  number  of  peo- 
ple and  the  manner  in  which  they  receive  the  story  is  es- 
sentially multiform.  There  is  the  man  with  the  loud  guf- 
faw; the  man  who  simply  smiles,  the  man  who  laughs 
with  his  face  and  his  hands  and  his  shoulders,  and  the 
man  who,  as  the  French  say,  "fails  to  arrive,"  and  does 
not  see  the  point  of  your  pleasantry  until  next  day.  And 
within  these  four  boundaries  of  hilarity  lie  as  many  vari- 
eties of  appreciation  and  demonstration  as  there  are 
people. 

Then  again  there  are  essential  differences.  There  is 
the  man  who  thinks  no  story  is  funny,  unless  it  be  at  the 
same  time  unclean ;  another  who  considers  only  such  sto- 
ries funny  as  involve  profanity ;  the  third,  who  is  keenly 
alive  to  puns ;  the  fourth,  who  appreciates  a  story  told 
him,  but  always  spoils  it  himself,  when  he  tries  to  tell  it ; 
the  fifth — but  why  continue?  The  fact  is  that  the  na- 
ture of  what  men  consider  humorous  ranges  from  the 


110  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

appreciation  of  a  brilliant  sally  to  the  absorption  of  men- 
tal filth — you  will  always  find  some  one  along  the  line 
of  this  descending  scale  who  thinks  its  various  sections 
funny. 

So  with  radicalism.  Some  men  consider  themselves  rad- 
ical, when  they  are  merely  ill-tempered ;  others  when  they 
have  soured;  others  again,  when  they  are  self-opinion- 
ated ;  and  yet  others,  when  they  are  mentally  dyspeptic. 
Hence  it  comes  about  that  radicalism  seems  to  range  from 
Anarchy  to  a  mild  socio-economic  fervor.  And  types 
could  be  quoted  almost  ad  infinitum  of  men,  who  consider 
themselves  radicals  and  who  cover  as  wide  a  territory  as 
mental  latitude  can  conceive. 

There  is  the  Nihilist,  who  feels  that  radicalism  means 
the  destruction  of  men  in  high  places ;  the  Anarchist,  who 
feels  that  disobedience  to  established  laws  will  finally 
prove  the  redemption  of  society ;  the  Socialist,  who  clam- 
ors for  the  possession  of  the  means  of  production  by  gov- 
ernment; the  Communist,  who  dimly  sees  a  vision  of  the 
holding  in  common  of  everything;  the  Agrarian,  who, 
ranging  from  the  ultra-left  in  the  old  country,  to  the  en- 
thusiastic single  taxer  in  this,  labors  to  show  that  our 
attitude  toward  the  land  will  in  its  final  analysis  solve 
all  sociologic  problems. 

That  practical  citizenship  involves  an  ability  to  know 
which  of  these  propositions  is  true  and  which  is  not  true, 
goes  without  saying,  because  any  or  all  of  these  various 
remedies  for  our  social  ills  will  present  themselves  to  the 
citizen  either  through  the  channels  of  his  own  party,  if 
he  have  one,  or  through  a  distinctly  organized  party. 
And  when  the  time  for  the  exercise  of  his  franchise  comes 
about,  he  is  faced  by  a  variety  of  "tickets" — the  Repub- 
lican party,  the  Democratic  party,  the  "New  Idea,"  the 
Independent,  the  "Civic  party"  (if  somebody  will  kindly 


RADICALISM  111 

create  one),  the  Prohibition  party,  the  Socialist  party, 
the  Labor  party,  the  Social  Democracy,  the — but  again, 
why  continue?  These  human  forces  are  all  alike  and  as 
different  people  call  different  things  "funny ;"  so  differ- 
ent people  call  different  things  "radical." 

How  decide  ?  Several  factors  enter  into  the  decision.  It 
would  be  pleasant  and  very  much  easier  to  give  a  simple, 
definite  answer,  and  to  select  any  one  of  the  long  list  of 
parties  and  say :  "This  is  the  true  party."  But  it  would 
savor  of  inertia — for  I  suspect  that  most  men  who  defi- 
nitely settle  down  to  such  an  answer  do  so  because  it's  too 
much  trouble  to  work  out  all  of  these  things. 

And  yet  there  are  a  few  simple  rules  that  may  guide 
the  selection,  which  can  be  readily  discovered  and  applied. 
The  first  is  the  segregation  of  all  these  methods  of  polit- 
ical agitation  into  two  large  groups,  which  may  be  labeled 
the  intelligent  and  the  non-intelligent.  Go  back  to  the 
humorous  anecdote.  Here  are  two  men  telling  you  a 
story.  The  first  man  is  a  burly,  good-natured,  jovial 
fellow,  whose  story  reeks  with  profanity  and  filth,  and 
who  claps  you  on  the  back  with  his  huge  hand  until  you 
gasp  for  breath  and  who  always  tells  his  story  three  times 
if  you  unguardedly  or  diplomatically  show  any  signs  of 
appreciation.  When  he  is  through  it  is  difficult  to  tell 
whether  one  has  listened  to  a  funny  story,  or  whether  one 
has  been  taking  a  lesson  in  physical  gymnastics  in  a  men- 
tal sewer.  It  may  be  assumed  with  perfect  safety  that 
gymnastics  are  useful  and  that  mental  sewage  probably 
has  as  much  reason  for  existence  as  its  physical  counter- 
part. But  whether  the  combination  is  an  essential  ingre- 
dient of  human  happiness  in  its  most  acceptable  form,  re- 
mains subject  to  doubt. 

Then  there  is  the  other  man,  who  sits  quietly  and  tells 
you  an  incident,  clean  as  a  mountain  spring,  palpable 


112  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

enough  for  the  blind  to  see  and  bubbling  with  the  effer- 
vescence of  wit.  You  quaff  it  as  you  would  wine.  Not  a 
moment  need  a  man  hesitate  as  to  the  mental  drink  to  be 
preferred.  Wine  and  sewage  are  surely  far  enough  apart 
to  allow  of  ready  differentiation. 

So  it  is  with  radicalism.  It  behooves  him  who  desires 
to  exercise  practical  citizenship  to  familiarize  himself 
with  the  various  forms  of  radicalism,  but  always  as  repre- 
sented by  men  of  intelligence  in  each  movement.  Thus  the 
Nihilist  who  throws  a  bomb  differs  essentially  from  the 
Nihilist  who  believes  that  human  society  must  return  to  a 
primitive  form  of  lawlessness  before  it  can  appreciate  the 
value  of  law.  The  former  is  unintelligent  and  therefore 
the  advocate  of  brute  force ;  the  latter  is  intelligent  and 
therefore  the  advocate  of  educative  measures.  Both  may 
be  harboring  a  delusion,  but  the  one  is  an  enemy  of  soci- 
ety, the  other  a  harmless  theorist,  if  you  please.  The 
Anarchist  who  lacks  intelligence  is  the  Anarchist  who 
sends  bombs  by  mail  or  by  express  to  perfectly  innocent 
people.  The  intelligent  Anarchist  is  he  who  sees  in  the 
violation  of  the  law  by  those  who  feel  that  they  are  not 
bound  by  law  a  species  of  outlawry  that  shows  that  the 
law  is  invalid  and  can  therefore  be  dispensed  with  and  set 
aside.  Both  may  be  harboring  a  fantasm,  but  one  is  sub- 
ject to  police  regulation,  and  rightly  so,  while  the  other 
has  a  right  to  a  patient  hearing.  It  would  clear  the  at- 
mosphere of  our  understanding  conditions  in  Russia  very 
much  if  we  felt  prepared  to  make  the  distinction  here  in- 
dicated for  the  two  classes  of  men  in  these  two  groups. 

The  unintelligent  Socialist  clamors  for  a  rehabilitation 
of  things  on  a  feebly  comprehended  basis,  which  rehabili- 
tation, if  tried,  would  fail  miserably ;  while  the  intelligent 
Socialist  sees  approaching  the  time  when  government  con- 
trol and  government  ownership,  and  group  ownership  of 


RADICALISM  113 

this,  that  or  the  other  series  of  conveniences  or  opportuni- 
ties will  be  found  to  be  a  very  much  more  sensible  way  of 
doing  things  than  the  way  we  follow  now.  The  unintel- 
ligent agrarian  burns  his  landlord's  house  and  puts  the 
torch  to  his  standing  grain;  the  intelligent  agrarian 
tries  to  teach  his  neighbor  a  rational  substitution  of  ren- 
tal values  to  represent  Henry  George's  "unearned  incre- 
ment" and  that  such  substitution  by  means  of  the  single 
tax  will  not  be  confiscation  but  solid  business  sense. 

Run  this  line  of  reasoning  through  all  the  various  the- 
ories of  political  economy  with  which  you  have  come  in 
contact  and  you  will  find  that  the  practical  citizen  will  sift 
the  intelligent  understanding  and  appreciation  of  an  ad- 
vanced idea  from  the  unintelligent,  and  will  accept  the 
one  and  reject  the  other.  If  at  any  point  this  idea  comes 
to  him  through  his  party  organization  he  will  vote  his 
party  ticket ;  if  it  comes  to  him  through  a  separate  and 
distinct  party  he  will  vote  the  ticket  of  that  party,  and  if 
it  comes  to  him  through  neither  source  and  he  finds  it  im- 
portant that  emphasis  should  be  given  to  some  particular 
idea  at  some  particular  time,  he  will,  through  some  civic 
organization,  get  some  men  to  run  for  office,  who  will 
stand  for  and  pledge  themselves  to  the  principles  which 
the  voter  desires  to  see  carried  out,  or  the  principle  near- 
est of  attainment.  For  as  we  will  see  in  a  moment,  the 
unavoidable  element  of  futurity  in  radicalism  frequently 
involves  a  step  in  the  direction  in  which  one  feels  he 
would  like  to  take  a  leap. 

The  first  rule  of  the  grammar  of  Radicalism,  there- 
fore, is,  "Listen  to  the  intelligent  exponent  of  the  theory 
which  seems  to  you  of  import,  and  not  to  the  unintelli- 
gent exponent  of  it." 

The  second  rule  of  the  grammar  is  that  anything  which 
breaks  a  natural  sequence  is  doomed  to  failure.  From  the 


114  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

blossom  to  the  ripened  fruit  is  a  series  of  imperceptible 
minute  steps.  There  are  no  leaps.  From  the  laying  of 
the  egg  to  the  bird  hatched  from  it  is  a  series  of  imper- 
ceptible natural  steps.  There  are  no  leaps.  From  the 
inception  of  a  thought  in  the  mind  of  the  author  to  the 
final  edition  of  the  book  in  its  printed  form  is  a  series  of 
perfectly  adjusted  steps,  whereof  one  follows  the  other  in 
normal  order.  There  are  no  leaps.  The  author  cannot 
think  his  book  and  then  expect  it  to  leap  forth  bodily 
from  his  brain  in  a  10,000  edition.  He  must  write  it ;  he 
must  have  sufficient  education  in  spelling,  writing  and 
grammar  to  make  it  intelligible  to  the  printer;  he  must 
learn  to  handle  a  typewriter,  if  that  be  required ;  he  must 
undergo  the  drudgery  of  proof-reading,  and,  in  fact, 
must  take  all  the  steps  required,  in  one  shape  or  the  other. 
And  beyond  all  he  must  know  that  somebody  wants  to 
read  his  book  after  it  is  written ;  otherwise  the  book,  even 
when  produced,  will  prove  a  failure. 

So,  with  the  reforms  suggested  by  Radicalism;  there 
should  be  in  them  the  element  of  natural  sequence.  To 
plant  a  group  of  men  into  an  artificial  environment  and 
to  ask  them  to  live  a  life  based  upon  no  coherent  series 
of  natural  traits,  militates  against  one  of  the  first  laws 
of  nature.  The  sentence,  "I  ask  not  that  my  disciples 
be  taken  out  of  the  world,  but  that  they  be  protected  in 
the  world,"  tells  this  story  in  the  words  of  highest  wis- 
dom. Any  theory  which  requires  artificial  environment 
has  in  it  the  seeds  of  failure.  Brook  Farm  sends  its  moan 
of  failure  through  history  and  is  joined  by  the  ghosts 
of  other  ventures  with  plaintive  little  notes  coming  from 
Sinaloa,  from  Topolibampo,  from  Economy,  Pa.,  and 
from  the  shores  of  the  Hudson,  a  little  nearer  home ;  not 
because  these  movements  lacked  intelligence,  but  because 
they  interrupted  the  course  of  nature. 


RADICALISM  115 

Let  me  not  be  misunderstood  as  unqualifiedly  negating 
the  value  of  artificial  helps.  Luther  Burbank  has  demon- 
strated that  marvels  can  be  accomplished  by  artificial 
helps  properly  applied  under  the  laws  of  growth.  But 
the  thing  grafted  must  always  in  its  nature  resemble  the 
thing  whereupon  it  is  grafted.  It  is  perfectly  feasible 
to  graft  a  Keifer  pear  upon  one  of  its  wild  progenitors, 
but  it  could  not  be  done  with  a  watermelon  vine.  It  is  al- 
together permissible  to  graft  a  plum  on  a  peach,  but  to 
do  the  same  with  sugar  cane  will  produce  no  results. 
Hence,  the  second  rule  of  the  grammar  of  Radicalism  is, 
avoid  breaks  of  nature's  sequences. 

The  third  rule  of  that  grammar  is,  "Festina  lente," 
i.  e.,  "Make  haste  slowly."  Realizing  that  the  driving 
force  of  Radicalism  is  the  thought  of  the  future,  we  can 
readily  see  that  that  thought  of  the  future  should,  while 
being  held  in  mind  intact  and  complete,  never  exclude 
the  various  essential  steps  in  the  progress  of  its  unfold- 
ment.  Thus,  when  a  man  starts  a  business  he  must  have 
in  mind  the  kind  of  success  he  is  aiming  at,  and  yet  never 
deceive  himself  with  the  idea  that  that  success  will  fall 
into  his  lap  while  he  waits,  or  that  it  will  grow  on  a 
neighboring  tree  by  some  species  of  magic.  The  propo- 
sition he  has  in  mind  may  be  a  radical  one ;  it  may  be  the 
attainment  of  a  purpose  entirely  new  to  the  world;  it 
may  be  the  final  achievement  of  some  social  condition ;  of 
some  business  combination;  of  some  engineering  enter- 
prise; of  some  one  thing,  whatever  its  nature,  whereof 
the  world  has  never  dreamed,  yet  he  must  needs  allow, 
and  allow  amply  for  the  intervening  steps,  and  he  must 
have  those  steps  as  carefully  planned  as  the  ultimate  ob- 
ject. 

The  business  man,  before  he  puts  his  first  man  on  the 
road  in  a  small  way,  aye,  before  he  looks  around  for  his 


116  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

office  or  store,  must  have  in  mind  the  kind  of  stock  he  is 
going  to  carry,  the  cost  and  selling  price,  the  disposition 
of  his  advertising  matter  and  the  routes  to  be  taken  by 
"those  fifty  salesmen  whom  he  is  going  to  have  some 
of  these  days" — or  he  might  as  well  not  begin.  The  suc- 
cessful business  man  is  he  who  has  the  details  of  his  busi- 
ness well  in  hand.  And  wherever  there  be  a  reform  or  a 
radical  movement,  the  details  of  which  have  not  been 
thought  out,  there  is  a  movement  which  will  die  away 
more  or  less  successfully,  I  was  going  to  say,  lamentably. 
Step  by  step  do  things  not  only  go,  but  they  must  be  so 
planned.  Whatever  is  premature,  cannot  be  made  to 
thrive  under  the  force  of  public  opinion,  or  to  be  carried 
by  that  one  side  of  it,  which  is  the  force  of  building  upon 
the  future,  called  Radicalism. 

Let  us  say  that  a  group  of  citizens  have  in  mind  the 
restoration  of  power  to  the  people,  from  whom  it  has 
been  taken  by  the  "interests."  That  this  taking  away 
has  occurred  no  one  doubts,  least  of  all  the  "interests," 
for  the  man  who  deprives  another  of  his  right,  or  of  his 
rights,  is  every  whit  as  well  aware  of  it,  as  is  that  other, 
only  he  makes  no  noise  about  it,  while  the  other  does.  In 
a  fight  the  man  who  inflicts  punishment  on  the  other  is 
just  as  much  aware  of  it  as  is  the  panting  opponent,  but 
he  is  not  making  as  much  noise  about  it.  In  fact,  in  or- 
der to  win  in  the  battle  he  had  to  reserve  all  his  forces, 
and  he  had  none  to  waste  in  noise.  Hence  the  party 
which  holds  the  advantage  is  the  one  which  makes  least 
noise  about  it.  But  it  would  be  stupid  to  think  that  it 
does  not  know  it. 

Now,  if  the  proposition  be  to  restore  the  disturbed 
equilibrium  sensibly  and  rationally,  but  radically,  the  ul- 
timate form  of  that  restoration  must  be  held  well  in  mind. 
It  would  be  unwise  to  hold  it  in  mind  as  ultimate  confisca- 


RADICALISM  117 

tion  of  property,  or  as  a  form  of  leveling  communism,  or 
as  a  reduction  to  primitive  conditions.  Nature  cannot  be 
forced  back  upon  herself.  If  the  effort  be  made  there 
is  violence.  Look  at  the  French  Revolution  as  an  illus- 
tration of  this  form  of  unwisdom.  Whatever  be  the  ul- 
timate goal — and  it  is  not  within  the  province  of  my 
shortcomings  to  shape  it — let  the  steps  toward  that  goal 
be  carefully  planned  and  considered.  Take  some  local 
forms  as  experiment  stations.  Try  your  recalls,  your 
referendums,  your  direct  votes,  your  civil  service,  your 
single  tax,  your  what  not,  locally  first.  If  it  works  lo- 
cally it  will  spread  into  the  county  naturally,  and  thence 
to  the  State  and  thence  into  the  Nation. 

Galveston  did  that  with  its  government  by  commission. 
Judge  Lindsley  did  that  with  the  first  appreciation  of 
wayward  children,  which  they  ever  officially  received.  Mr. 
Wines  did  that  with  prison  reform  in  Illinois.  And  the 
citizen  who  sees  practical  citizenship  in  reforms  and  in 
the  advancement  of  radical  ideas,  can  make  no  serious 
error  if  he  plans  not  only  the  goal,  and  let  that  be  as  rad- 
ical as  he  please,  but  also  the  distinct  steps  that  lead  to 
that  goal,  not  only  as  steps,  but  in  the  order  in  which 
they  are  to  be  taken.  Hence  the  third  rule  of  this  gram- 
mar is  "Festina  lente"— "make  haste  slowly."  Think 
out  the  entire  proposition,  and  be  not  swept  off  your  feet 
by  the  brilliancy  of  the  ultimate  attainment  into  the 
chasm  of  the  unfinished  and  the  unpremeditated. 

The  fourth  rule  of  the  grammar  is,  "Criticism  is  good, 
in  small  doses ;  suggestion  of  a  remedy  is  better  in  doses 
of  any  convenient  size."  It  may  be  necessary  occasion- 
ally to  criticize  simply  for  the  corrective  effect  of  criti- 
cism. But  in  most  instances  it  is  quite  as  easy  to  add  to 
the  criticism,  if  criticism  there  need  be  at  all,  the  sugges- 
tion as  to  how  the  things  criticized  can  better  be  done. 


118  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

Any  suggestion  thus  offered,  whether  it  be  actually  car- 
ried out,  or  whether  it  only  leads  to  a  fuller  and  freer 
discussion  of  the  subject  under  advisement,  is  as  much 
part  of  practical  citizenship,  as  voting  the  ticket  which 
will  successfully  express  the  ideas  one  is  advocating. 

The  idea  that  citizenship  means  simply  voting  is  in 
itself  as  entirely  erroneous  as  the  idea  that  Christianity 
means  going  to  church  on  Sunday  morning  and  one 
evening  a  week.  These  exercises  are  infinitesimal  parts 
of  the  entire  subject.  The  man  who  goes  to  church  on 
Sunday  and  weighs  out  fourteen  ounces  to  the  pound  on 
Monday,  or  makes  a  disgraceful  political  deal  on  Tues- 
day, or  grinds  the  face  of  the  poor  all  the  rest  of  the 
week,  or,  in  fact,  does  anything  unmanly,  lacks  the  prop- 
er understanding  of  the  word  "Christianity"  and  has 
substituted  for  it  the  word  "churchianity,"  which,  while 
it  may  be  perfectly  harmless  in  itself,  is  a  dangerous 
substitute  for  the  real  article.  And  the  man  who  thinks 
that  citizenship  means  to  drop  a  bit  of  paper  into  a  box 
on  a  certain  day,  or  to  move  a  few  levers  on  a  machine 
and  then  go  away,  makes  the  same  mistake  as  does  his 
church  confrere.  Citizenship  means  to  take  reasonable 
cognizance  of  the  ideas  which  make  for  civic  betterment, 
both  in  the  local  field  and  in  the  larger  fields  of  the  coun- 
ty, the  State  and  the  Country.  It  means  to  know  some- 
thing of  measures  and  of  men ;  to  study  the  force  called 
Radicalism  and  to  know  what  it  is  that  is  of  value  in  the 
future ;  to  study  the  force  called  Conservatism  ( of  which 
more  will  be  said  in  the  next  chapter)  and  to  see  what  it 
is  in  the  past  that  should  be  conserved  and  what  thrown 
out.  In  fact,  Christianity  is  manhood  on  the  spiritual 
plane,  and  citizenship  is  manhood  on  the  natural  plane. 
Or,  in  other  words,  Christianity  means  to  treat  your 
neighbor  fairly  and  righteously  so  far  as  your  mental 


RADICALISM  119 

attitude  toward  him  is  concerned;  and  citizenship  means 
to  treat  him  fairly  and  righteously  so  far  as  his  natural 
possessions,  his  property,  his  rights  to  opportunity,  and 
the  brawn  of  his  good  right  arm  are  concerned.  Chris- 
tianity means  to  make  a  square  deal  with  the  mind  of 
your  neighbor,  and  citizenship  to  make  a  square  deal 
with  his  body. 

And  intelligent  Radicalism  gathers  from  the  future 
and  forecasts  into  the  future  the  things  and  proposi- 
tions which  will  accomplish  the  greatest  good  to  the 
greatest  number  at  as  near  a  point  of  time  as  feasible. 


120  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 


CHAPTER  XIII 


TO  RADICALISM HOW  IT  IS  ALLIED  WITH  MORALITY. 

IT  is  impossible  to  do  justice  to  this  section  of  our 
subject  unless  we  first  understand  thoroughly  one  of 
the  laws  of  these  human  dynamic  forces,  namely,  that 
of  the  shifting  standard  of  morality.  And  it  may  be  ap- 
propriate to  premise  a  definition  of  morals.  The  casual 
reader  means  by  "morals"  a  certain  code  of  written  and 
unwritten  laws  concerning  the  relations  of  the  sexes  in 
our  social  organism.  Hence  by  "immoral"  he  means  any- 
thing which  violates  that  code. 

This  restricted  view  is  quite  true  and  quite  proper,  but 
it  is  rather  too  closely  confined  to  serve  the  purposes  of  a 
consideration  of  the  huge  forces  of  which  we  are  here 
treating.  It  must  be  widened  to  meet  the  boundary  lines 
set  by  the  larger  philosophers — the  line  of  whom  begins 
with  Parmenides  and  Zeno  and  seems  to  come  to  a  legiti- 
mate close  in  Henry  James  the  elder. 

In  order  that  the  reader  may  thoroughly  appreciate 
this  broader  view  of  the  term  "morals,"  let  me  quote  the 
definition  given  by  Henry  James  in  his  "Morality  and  the 
Perfect  Life."  Says  he: 

"Morality,  then,  is  conditioned  upon  a  conflict  or  an- 
tagonism between  nature  and  society,  between  self-love 
and  charity,  between  my  natural  inclination  and  my  so- 
cial sympathies.  When  I  practically  subject  my  natural 
inclinations  or  appetites  to  my  social  sympathies  you  pro- 
nounce me  a  good  man;  when  I  practically  subject  the 


CONSERVATISM  121 

latter  to  the  former,  you  pronounce  me  an  evil  man.  Or 
let  me  state  the  same  truth  in  larger  characters.  Morality 
is  conditioned  upon  an  antagonism  between  the  private 
and  public  elements  in  humanity,  upon  a  conflict  between 
me  and  the  race,  between  myself  and  some  other  self. 
Accordingly  I  am  either  morally  good  or  morally  evil,  as 
I  practically  abase  myself  to  others,  or  practically  exalt 
myself  above  them." 

That  this  definition,  which  is  practically  that  of  Par- 
menides  modernly  worded,  widens  the  horizon  as  to  the 
definition  of  "morals"  goes  without  saying.  But  that  it 
also  makes  the  discussion  of  morals  in  their  wider  sense 
appropriate  in  the  consideration  of  the  human  dynam- 
ic called  "Conservatism"  also  follows,  since  the  present 
and  most  acute  manifestation  of  Conservatism  is  that 
which  concerns  itself  with  the  maintenance  of  the  rights 
of  the  individual  as  against  the  rights  of  society  at 
large. 

If  the  struggle  between  Conservatism  and  Radicalism, 
as  it  exists  in  civilized  society  today,  be  closely  examined 
it  will  be  found  to  group  people  into  two  large  aggre- 
gates, one  of  which  we  have  designated  the  "interests," 
because  it  struggles  for  the  maintenance  of  what  may  be 
designated  private  (or  corporate)  interests  as  apposite  to, 
if  not  opposed  to,  the  interests  of  the  communality  rep- 
resented by  the  other  group.  If  you  look  into  the  railroad 
question,  for  instance,  through  the  eyes  of  President 
Roosevelt,  the  most  ardent  exponent  of  Radicalism  in  that 
line,  you  will  see  the  proposition  from  the  side  of  the 
"people ;"  if  you  look  at  it  through  the  eyes  of  Edward 
H.  Harriman,  you  will  see  it  as  it  presents  itself  to  those 
individuals  in  whose  hands  the  control  of  the  railroads 
has  come  to  rest.  That  both  these  sides,  the  "people"  as 
a  mass,  and  the  men  in  whose  hands  the  railroads  now  lie, 


122  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

as  to  control  and  ownership,  have  certain  definite  and 
tangible  rights,  no  one  doubts  for  a  moment.  That  the 
"people"  have  a  right  to  demand  certain  service  is  admit- 
ted— that  the  "interests"  have  a  right  to  certain  "re- 
turns" is  also  admitted.  This  is  not  the  place  to  enter  at 
large  into  this  discussion.  The  point  here  emphasized  is 
merely  that  the  dynamic  called  "Radicalism"  tends  un- 
consciously to  represent  the  group,  while  the  dynamic 
called  "Conservatism"  tends,  with  equal  unconsciousness, 
to  represent  the  individual.  Hence  in  its  unguarded  mo- 
ments, Radicalism  tends  to  speak  of  itself  as  "We,  the 
people ;"  while  Conservatism  is  equally  inclined,  in  its  un- 
guarded moments,  to  speak  profanely  on  the  same  topic, 
and  to  claim  a  "divine  right  of  property."  Both  views 
are  extreme,  but  representative. 

Suffice  it,  then,  for  present  purposes  to  assume  that 
Conservatism  is  somehow  allied  with  the  thing  we  call 
"morals  or  morality,"  and  to  make  an  effort  to  trace  this 
relationship,  let  us  first  widen  the  horizon.  Granting 
that  morality  in  a  restricted  sense  refers  to  the  relations 
of  men  and  women,  let  us  add  to  that  relation  another 
thought,  and  that  is  the  relations  of  the  individual  to  the 
group,  or  of  the  group  to  the  individual.  Let  us  call 
the  group  "society,"  for  the  sake  of  brevity.  Any  vio- 
lation of  the  social  status  then  becomes  immoral.  To 
steal,  to  kill,  to  defame,  to  overreach,  to  violate  any  law 
of  the  social  organism,  is  immoral.  It  is,  under  this  con- 
sideration, as  immoral  to  create  fictitious  values  by  the 
"watering"  of  stock  as  it  is  to  violate  the  marriage  com- 
pact— it  is  as  immoral  to  take  advantage  of  "opportu- 
nity" as  it  would  be  to  be  contributory  to  the  running  of 
a  house  of  ill  fame.  In  fact,  this  aspect  of  "morals" 
widens  the  proposition  to  cover  all  crime  against  society, 
whatever  its  nature,  and  to  consider  as  "immoral"  any 


CONSERVATISM  123 

breach  of  the  law,  under  which  society  has  found  it  use- 
ful and  contributory  to  its  continued  existence  to  live. 

It  is  essential  to  emphasize  this  wider  view  or  definition 
of  the  word,  since  otherwise  no  correct  concept  of  the 
topic  under  consideration  can  be  formed.  But  the  basic 
laws  of  morals  are  not  as  rigid  as  the  superficial  thinker 
is  inclined  to  make  them.  When  we  speak  to  the  Amer- 
ican of  "morals,"  even  when  limited  to  the  sense  to  which 
he  is  accustomed,  he  tends  to  think  of  the  term  as  re- 
ferring to  the  conditions  of  the  relationship  of  men  and 
women  as  held  by  society  in  America.  But  if  he  will  per- 
mit himself  to  look  at  the  question  of  these  relationships 
through  Japanese  eyes,  he  will  note  that  Japan,  rightly 
or  wrongly,  looks  at  this  particular  item  of  human  life  in 
a  different  way.  If  he  were  to  examine  the  books  of  the 
Board  of  Health  in  an  Austrian  municipality  he  would 
find  there  items  which  would  shock  his  sensibilities  thor- 
oughly, but  to  which  an  Austrian,  of  exactly  the  same 
grade  of  culture  and  civilization  as  himself,  would  be  en- 
tirely callous.  In  the  same  way  the  distinctive  boundary 
lines  which  America  draws  about  women,  married  and 
unmarried,  are  entirely  different  in  their  contour  and 
topographic  situs  from  those  drawn  in  other  countries, 
whence  comes  the  strange  fact  that  foreign  women  look 
askance  upon  what  our  women  permit  themselves  to  do, 
while  our  women  return  the  compliment,  which  simply 
demonstrates  that,  even  so  far  as  one  feature  of  the  gen- 
eral question  is  concerned,  standards  differ  essentially, 
and  the  carrying  forward  of  any  one  standard  always  in- 
volves a  lack  of  recognition,  sometimes  amounting  to  con- 
demnation, of  any  or  all  others. 

No  American  municipality,  occupying  the  vantage 
ground  of  higher  standards,  would  for  a  moment  permit 
itself  to  follow  either  the  Austrian  or  the  Japanese  plan 


124  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

of  handling  that  edge  of  the  sex  question  which  borders 
on  and  overlaps  the  boundaries  of  the  permissible.  And 
an  Austrian  or  a  Japanese  would  look  with  distrust  upon 
our  method  of  controlling  the  question,  and  call  it  by 
names  not  necessarily  in  the  dictionary  of  courtesy.  The 
first  point,  then,  which  is  here  to  be  made  and  held  in 
mind  is  that  "morals"  are  not  at  any  one  time  a  rigid 
thing  and  equally  regarded  in  all  places. 

Neither  are  "morals"  any  more  rigid  when  regarded 
at  different  periods  of  time  in  the  same  place. 

Continuing  first  along  the  lines  of  the  sex  question,  it 
may  be  noted  that  the  morals  of  Old  Testament  times 
differ  from  those  of  the  New  Testament.  The  moral  tone 
of  the  Court  of  Solomon  and  of  that  of  David,  together 
with  the  individual  lives  of  these  semi-barbaric  rulers,  will 
not  stand  the  test  of  the  standard  required  by  the  Great 
Central  Figure  of  the  New  Testament,  nor  that  set  by 
the  early  Christian  church.  Does  it  not  very  seriously 
confuse  the  student  of  the  Old  Testament,  if  he  permits 
himself  to  project  the  life  of  the  Patriarch  Abraham, 
with  the  names  of  Sarah,  of  Hagar,  of  Keturah  and 
many  others  attached  to  his,  or  that  of  Jacob,  with  the 
names  of  Leah  and  Rachel  and  Bilhah  and  Zilpah  at- 
tached thereto,  into  one  of  our  Western  States,  say, 
Utah,  and  then  to  listen  to  sermons  on  the  saintliness  of 
these  typical  figures?  His  confusion  instantly  vanishes 
if  he  admits  the  main  factors  of  evolution  in  historic  so- 
ciology, as  he  is  compelled  to  admit  them  in  biology,  and 
watches  how  the  tremendous  intelligence  called  "the  hu- 
man force"  in  these  chapters  has  gradually  been  elimi- 
nating these,  at  present,  undesirable  forms  and  substi- 
tuting others  more  in  harmony  with  advanced  standards 
of  morality. 

If  he  will  take  a  moment's  time  and  ask  some  intelli- 


CONSERVATISM  125 

gent  Turk  or  Mohammedan  what  is  meant  by  the  move- 
ment called  the  "Beha  Ullah,"  that  gentleman  will  in- 
form him  that  polygamy  was  permitted  by  the  prophet 
for  certain  sociologic  reasons.  That  a  good  Mohamme- 
dan was  compelled  to  take  into  his  family  women  related 
to  him  and  dependent  upon  him  for  their  maintenance 
physically  (and  according  to  some  thinkers  spiritually 
also),  and  that  these  constituted  his  subordinate  family, 
while  he  had  virtually  only  one  wife,  with  whom  the  mar- 
riage relation  was  maintained.  That  foreigners  misun- 
derstood things  and  brought  about  an  evil  report  does 
not  alter  the  actual  status  of  the  case  among  earnest  and 
true  believers  in  Allah.  So  the  Mohammedans  were  al- 
ways told  that  they  must  have  only  one  wife,  and  usually 
had  only  one  wife,  while  their  family  might  have  to  con- 
sist of  several  women,  whom,  according  to  the  laws  and 
customs  of  the  country,  somebody  must  "own,"  and  for 
whom  somebody  must  pay  the  taxes.  This  economic  situ- 
ation is  now  being  remedied  by  the  Behai.  The  number 
of  women  for  whom  one  property  owner  is  held  respon- 
sible, besides  his  wife,  is  reduced  to  one  additional  woman, 
usually  a  relative,  or  the  relict  of  a  relative,  while  the 
methods  of  taxation  are  being  revised,  so  as  to  change 
even  this  feature.  If  the  student  will  note  how  this  in- 
dication warrants  the  statement  that  morals  are  being 
uplifted  to  a  higher  standard,  and  if  he  will  compare  this 
advance  with  advances  made  along  other  lines,  such  as 
prisons,  tenement  houses,  the  conditions  of  labor,  and  so 
forth,  he  will  have  a  background  upon  which  he  can  safe- 
ly entertain  thoughts  on  these  topics  which  will  be  per- 
fectly sane  and  amenable  to  rational  co-ordination  and 
modification. 

Take  another  illustration — the  slave  trade.      Apart 
from  the  serious  politico-economic  blunder  committed  by 


126  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

Leopold  of  Belgium  recently,  and  a  little  shadow  of 
peonage  here  and  there,  there  is  no  slave  trade,  and  if  a 
Christian  were  to  indulge  in  it,  he  would  be  most  seriously 
violating  the  standard  of  morals.  Yet  the  days  in  which 
this  standard  was  not  so  high  are  not  at  all  in  the  dim 
and  far  distant  past,  but  rather  in  the  near  historic  fore- 
ground. Samuel  McChord  Crothers,  in  his  delightful 
"Pardoner's  Wallet,"  one  of  the  most  unique  books  which 
it  has  been  my  pleasure  for  some  time  to  read,  says: 

"Half  a  century  ago  there  were  a  dozen  thrifty  argu- 
ments for  human  slavery.  They  are,  abstractly  speak- 
ing, as  good  now  as  they  ever  were,  but  they  have  passed 
out  of  cultivation. 

"When  a  great  evil  has  been  recognized  by  the  world 
there  is  revision  of  all  our  judgments.  A  new  principle 
of  classification  is  introduced,  by  which  we  differentiate 
the  goats  from  the  sheep.  It  is  hard  after  that  to  revive 
the  old  admirations.  The  temperance  agitation  of  the 
last  century  has  not  abolished  drunkenness,  but  it  has 
made  the  conception  of  a  pious,  respectable  drunkard 
seem  grotesque." 

He  might  have  added  that  even  if  we  have  not  gained 
much  in  the  way  of  restriction  of  an  illicit  traffic  in  the 
immoralities  of  drink,  we  are  at  least  spared  in  our  novels 
the  disgusting  pictures  of  drunken  parsons,  so  common 
in  the  whole  line  of  writers  that  arises  in  Addison  and 
runs  through  Fielding  and  Smollet,  and  closes  with  Dick- 
ens. There  are  at  least  no  more  of  those  reprobates 
among  Anglo-Saxon  peoples,  and  there  may  even  be  a 
chance  of  their  disappearing  from  the  group  of  Russian 
rural  "popes,"  if  the  temperance  agitation  now  so  strong 
in  Germany  can  be  made  to  cross  the  line  into  Little  Rus- 
sia. Moral  standards  as  to  drunkenness  have  been  quite 
distinctly  raised.  But  to  resume  with  Mr.  Crothers : 


CONSERVATISM  127 

"It  (the  temperance  agitation)  has  also  reduced  the 
business  of  liquor  selling  to  a  decidedly  lower  place  in  the 
esteem  of  the  community.  So,  too,  when  we  read  to-day 
of  the  horrors  of  the  slave  trade,  we  reconstruct  in  our 
imagination  the  character  of  the  slave  trader,  and  a  bru- 
tal wretch  he  is.  But  in  his  day  the  Guinea  captain  held 
his  own  with  the  best.  He  was  a  good  husband  and 
father,  a  kind  neighbor,  a  generous  benefactor.  Presi- 
dent Ezra  Stiles,  of  Yale  College,  in  his  'Literary  Diary,' 
describes  such  a  beautiful  character.  It  was  when  Dr. 
Stiles  was  yet  a  parish  minister  in  Newport  that  one  of 
his  parishioners  died,  of  whom  he  wrote :  'God  had  blessed 
him  with  a  good  Estate,  and  he  and  his  Family  have  been 
eminent  for  Hospitality  to  all  and  Charity  to  the  poor 
and  afflicted.  At  his  death  he  recommended  Religion  to 
his  Children,  and  told  them  that  the  world  was  nothing. 
The  only  external  blemish  on  his  Character  was  that  he 
was  a  little  addicted  to  the  marvellous  in  the  stories  of 
what  he  had  seen  in  his  Voyages  and  Travels.  But  in  his 
Dealings  he  was  punctual,  upright  and  honest,  and  (ex- 
cept as  to  the  Flie  in  the  Oyntment,  the  disposition  to 
tell  marvellous  Stories  of  Dangers  and  Travels,  &c.)  in 
all  other  Things  he  was  of  sober  and  good  moral  charac- 
ter, respected  and  beloved  of  all  *  *  *'  &c. 

"It  was  in  1773  that  this  good  man  died  in  the  odor  of 
sanctity.  It  is  quite  incidentally  that  we  learn  that  he 
was  'for  many  years  a  Guinea  captain  and  had  no  doubt 
of  the  slave  trade.'  His  pastor  suggests  that  he  might 
have  chosen  another  business  than  that  'of  buying  and 
selling  the  human  species.'  Still,  in  1773  this  did  not 
constitute  an  offense  serious  enough  to  be  termed  a  fly  in 
the  ointment.  In  1785  Dr.  Stiles  speaks  of  the  slave 
trade  as  'a  most  iniquitous  trade  in  the  souls  of  men.' 
Much  may  happen  in  a  dozen  years  in  changing  one's 


128  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

ideas  of  moral  values.  In  another  generation  the  civilized 
world  was  agreed  that  the  slave  trade  was  piracy.  After 
that  there  were  no  fine  Christian  characters  among  the 
'slave  traders.'  ' 

It  would  be  of  interest  to  follow  out  the  line  of  mathe- 
matics so  ingeniously  started  by  Mr.  Crothers.  If  it  took 
from  1773  to  1785  for  the  conviction  to  get  a  start  in  the 
minds  of  a  comparatively  small  group  of  individuals,  and 
if  it  took  until  1835  for  this  group  to  be  enlarged  to  the 
size  it  assumed  under  Lovejoy,  William  Lloyd  Garrison, 
Phillips,  Gerrit  Smith  and  John  Brown ;  and  if  again  it 
took  until  the  middle  of  1862  for  it  to  be  made  an  en- 
forced political  issue  of  the  war,  and  until  1870  for  the 
readjustment  to  assume  some  kind  of  reasonable  outline, 
then  we  have  a  chronology  whereby  to  anticipate  the 
measurement  of  the  next  manifestation  of  the  same  hu- 
man force  which  put  the  North  and  the  South  into  an 
attitude  of  war  one  against  the  other  and  finally  forced 
the  issue  in  1861.  For  if  morals  are  a  shifting  basis,  then 
the  same  kind  of  shifting  may  be  anticipated  along  simi- 
lar lines. 

If,  for  instance,  we  have  hitherto  considered  the  enor- 
mous aggregations  of  wealth,  which  have  arisen  among 
us,  as  normal  and  moral,  and  the  first  warning  voices  are 
just  about  now  beginning  to  be  raised,  then,  according 
to  previous  experience,  we  are  now  about  at  the  point  at 
which  Dr.  Stiles  was  in  reference  to  the  slave  trade  in 
1785.  And  if  it  took  until  1835,  a  period  of  about  fifty 
years  for  public  sentiment,  or  public  opinion,  to  shape 
and  mold  a  sufficient  number  of  minds  up  to  the  proper 
standard  of  height  and  depth  of  resolve,  and  if  in  addi- 
tion to  that  it  took  further  twenty-six  years  to  bring  the 
issue  to  its  pinnacle  and  force  the  overthrow,  then  the 
reformer  of  to-day  may  estimate  the  length  of  time  that 


CONSERVATISM  129 

may  possibly  lie  between  the  present  form  of  his  desire 
and  its  future  and  ultimate  achievement,  unless,  indeed, 
the  men  of  a  coming  generation  shall  have  learned  more 
of  these  human  forces  and  the  manner  of  their  operation 
and  shall  profit  by  that  knowledge  to  bring  on  the  crisis 
more  rapidly  and  less  acutely. 

But  it  is  perfectly  easy  to  see  that  the  regime  of  the 
"corporation"  stands  now  upon  the  same  edge  of  mass- 
consciousness  upon  which  the  slave  trade  stood  in  1785. 
It  is  being  recognized  as  immoral  by  quite  a  large  group 
of  thinkers,  and  their  thought  will  gradually  pervade,  as 
leaven  does  pervade,  the  mass,  and  will  gradually  lift 
the  standard  of  business  morals  to  a  point  where  the  term 
"piracy"  will  find  another  equally  logical  application,  as 
it  does  in  Dr.  Stiles's  "Literary  Diary." 

It  is  with  the  recognition  of  the  fact  clearly  in  mind 
that  the  force  called  "Conservatism"  must  intuitively  and 
by  nature  stand  for  the  conservation  of  that  which  is  es- 
tablished, or  of  the  established  order  of  things,  and  that 
hence  it  must  stand  to-day  for  what  it  will  to-morrow  ad- 
mit as  being  immoral  and  outgrown,  that  we  are  now  pre- 
pared to  study  the  force  of  Conservatism  as  it  manifests 
itself  in  both  its  intelligent  and  its  unintelligent  forms, 
and  to  that  study  will  we  apply  ourselves  in  the  next 
chapter. 


130  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 


CHAPTER  XIV 

CONSEEVATISM  AS  THE  CENTRE  OF  A  WHEEL  AND  RADICAL- 
ISM   AS    THE    CIRCUMFERENCE NOBILITY    OF 

MANHOOD. 

THE  reader  is  reminded  that  we  are  studying  a 
series  of  human  forces,  which,  as  a  whole,  are  as 
subject  to  investigation  as  are  physical  forces. 
He  is  likewise  reminded  that  the  great  mass  of  human 
force  presents  two  giant  aspects,  called  Radicalism  and 
Conservatism,  in  the  same  way  that  the  great  mass  of 
physical  force  presents  two  manifestations  called,  respec- 
tively, centrifugal  and  centripetal  aspects — one  a  force 
that  drives  onward,  the  other  a  force  that  holds  back. 
When  they  are  thought  of  in  the  same  plane,  Conser- 
vatism stands  for  the  centre ;  Radicalism  for  the  circum- 
ference. As  a  wheel,  in  order  that  it  may  be  a  wheel  and 
perform  the  uses  of  a  wheel,  must  needs  have  a  centre  or 
an  axis,  and  a  circumference,  and,  as  the  centre  must  al- 
ways stand  utterly  or  comparatively  still,  while  the  cir- 
cumference must  always  travel  at  some  rate  of  speed,  so 
the  force  called  Conservatism,  and  the  men  and  women 
representing  it  must  needs  stand  utterly  or  comparatively 
still,  while  the  force  called  Radicalism  and  the  men  and 
women  representing  it  must  be  constantly  looking  for 
new  methods  of  expressing  the  life  that  is  in  them.  Both 
are  necessary;  both  are  essential  to  the  social  structure. 
A  centre  without  a  circumference  is  dead — a  circumfer- 
ence without  a  centre  is  unthinkable.  A  wheel  that  is  all 
axis  would  not  turn ;  a  wheel  that  is  all  circumference  and 
without  a  centre  could  not  be  built. 


NOBILITY    OF    MANHOOD  131 

Hence,  whether  these  two  groups  of  persons  like  it  or 
not,  one  is  as  essential  as  the  other.  And  the  world  of 
human  interests  could  not  move  very  far  along  the  lines 
of  eternal  progress  and  purpose  if  either  were  perma- 
nently eliminated. 

But  the  whole  complex  of  the  situation  is  impossible  of 
review,  if  we  confine  our  investigations  to  any  one  par- 
ticular feature  of  the  case.  That  has  been  done  thus  far. 
We  have  thought  of  Conservatism  in  its  relation  to  prop- 
erty rights,  as  we  have  of  Radicalism.  If  any  one  were  to 
ask  the  questions,  "What  do  the  radicals  and  the  conser- 
vatives want?"  the  answer  in  general,  so  far  as  America 
is  concerned,  would  be :  "The  conservatives  stand  for  pri- 
vate ownership  of  land,  of  public  utilities,  of  opportu- 
nity. They  stand  for  the  vast  aggregates  of  fortunes, 
which  imperil  our  social  structure;  they  stand  for  the 
preservation  of  the  interests.  The  radicals  stand  for 
municipal  ownership,  State  ownership,  Federal  control 
and  some  of  them  for  Federal  ownership  of  certain  pub- 
lic utilities,  for  radical  changes  in  relation  to  the  question 
of  property  rights,  amounting,  in  some  cases,  to  meas- 
ures dangerously  near  confiscation."  And,  so  far  as  the 
general  thought  upon  the  subject  is  concerned,  the 
answer  is  right,  for  its  chief  manifestation  is  that.  It 
shows  more  in  relation  to  property  and  property  rights 
than  it  does  in  relation  to  anything  else. 

There  is,  however,  an  almost  unfathomable  depth  of 
essential  life  behind  and  beyond  this  surface  manifesta- 
tion. And  it  is  this  depth  which  should  be  admitted,  and 
toward  the  probing  of  which  an  effort  can  profitably  be 
made.  What  lies  behind  the  clinging  to  the  established 
order  of  things  ?  What  is  back  of  its  many,  many  mani- 
f  estations  ? 

In  religion  and  the  church  we  find  it  as  a  series  of  su- 


132  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

perstitions,  as  a  conglomeration  of  beliefs,  which  have 
grown  obsolete  and  out  of  date.  Yet  men  hesitate  to  throw 
them  aside,  because  of  some  innate  uncertainty  as  to  the 
propriety  of  such  rejection.  The  priest  and  minister 
who  has  long  ceased  to  believe  that  apostolicity  is  con- 
ferred by  the  imposition  of  hands,  and  who  believes  that 
priests  and  ministers  are  born  and  not  made — that  the 
imposition  of  hands  makes  a  man  a  priest  or  a  minister 
just  as  little  as  it  makes  him  a  poet  or  a  mechanic  or  an 
artist — hesitate  to  do  anything  which  will  in  any  wise 
interfere  with  the  general  respect  of  the  people  for  the 
cloth.  Why? 

Science  is  as  full  of  superstitions  as  the  church.  It  has 
changed  from  the  bullular  theory  of  light,  which  it  ac- 
cepted because  of  the  ponderous  weight  of  the  name  of 
Newton,  to  the  vibratory  theory.  It  has  changed  from 
the  concept  of  the  molten  interior  of  the  earth,  which  was 
merely  the  scientific  form  of  the  church's  old-fashioned 
"hell-fire"  theory,  to  that  of  a  probable  solidity  of  the 
earth's  centre ;  it  has  changed  from  the  thought  of  impos- 
sible activity  of  force  "over  space"  to  the  possibility  of 
such  action  under  the  consideration  of  the  newest  results 
of  radio-activity ;  yet  it  revises  its  theories  with  the  ut- 
most caution  and  with  a  sullen  slowness  that  demonstrates 
an  extreme  conservatism.  Why? 

Socio-economics  are  working  hard  at  the  question  of 
the  original  rights  of  property;  yet  in  the  face  of  the 
uncertainty  of  original  possession,  we  cling  to  the  old 
theories  with  the  strength  of  despair.  Why? 

We  give  ourselves  certain  valid  reasons,  superficially. 
In  the  question  of  vested  rights,  we  say  and  we  say  it 
with  propriety,  that  there  are  certain  enterprises  which 
absolutely  require  personal  and  individual  initiative.  The 
huge  tunnels,  a  fever  for  the  boring  of  which  has  broken 


NOBILITY    OF    MANHOOD  133 

out  among  us  of  late,  cannot  well  be  capitalized  by  any 
one  municipality,  nor  by  a  series  of  closely  neighboring 
municipalities,  since  they  depend  too  largely  upon  long- 
distance traffic  to  warrant  such  a  localization  of  capitali- 
zation. There  must  be  a  Pennsylvania  Railroad,  a  Pub- 
lic Service  Corporation  and  Interborough  Transit  Com- 
pany back  of  such  enterprises.  The  same  thing  is  true 
in  the  question  of  labor  vs.  capital.  True  as  the  griev- 
ances of  labor  are,  and  serious  as  the  changes  of  social 
fabric,  which  they  indicate  may  be,  the  fact  remains  that 
the  upbuilding  of  a  great  business  enterprise  depends  al- 
most totally  upon  the  initiative  and  energy  of  the  one 
man  who  started  it,  and  to  whom  methods  of  running  his 
business  should  not  be  dictated.  Loud  as  our  objections 
now  are  to  the  "octopus,"  it  must  be  admitted  that  the 
"octopus"  is  a  necessary  step,  even  toward  Federal  owner- 
ship, if  that  should  come,  as  doubtless  it  will  come.  Seri- 
ous as  may  be  the  objections  to  the  acquirement  of  huge 
wealth  in  the  hands  of  one  man,  it  must  be  admitted  that 
if  that  one  man  be  a  man  like  Mr.  Carnegie  there  are  cer- 
tain library  features,  certain  peace  conference  features, 
painted  upon  the  screen  of  Homestead  riots  and  Steel 
Trust  concerns  which  somewhat  modify  the  crudity  of 
outline  which  otherwise  thrusts  itself  upon  a  revolting 
sensibility. 

Thus  we  must  admit  that  there  is  some  strength  and 
some  validity  in  the  arguments  brought  forward  in  ref- 
erence to  the  property  aspect  of  the  situation.  But  that 
aspect  of  the  matter  is  a  secondary  one.  It  is  secondary 
in  the  careful  consideration  of  the  deeper  question.  The 
property  which  a  man  owns,  the  clothes  he  wears,  the 
wealth  he  possesses,  have  some  import,  but  beside  the 
question  of  his  manhood  and  of  his  character,  they  pale 
into  insignificance.  And  it  is  the  vast  possibility  of  this 


134  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

depth  of  "manhood"  which  true  Conservatism  instinctive- 
ly, though  sometimes  mistakenly,  tries  to  represent. 

So  when  we  come  to  study  the  "holding  back"  sense  in 
the  aggregate  group  of  humanity,  called  Conservatism, 
we  feel  a  depth  of  real  humanity  back  of  this  "holding 
back,"  this  hesitation  to  take  up  the  new  and  drop  the 
old,  which  deserves  careful  attention  on  the  part  of  those 
who  desire  to  understand  the  human  forces  back  of  the 
changes  we  call  politics  and  civics  and  other  names. 

For  ultimately  the  question  is  a  question  of  collective 
manhood,  not  a  question  of  collective  property.  If  Radi- 
calism could  bring  about  collective  property-holding  be- 
fore it  can  help  the  Almighty  bring  about  collective  man- 
hood, it  would  only  sow  the  seeds  of  another,  a  later  and 
a  fiercer  revolution.  And  if  Conservatism  permits  itself 
to  be  blinded  by  the  minor  question  of  property  rights, 
to  the  larger  and  truer  question  of  the  "rights  of  man," 
it  will  bring  about  an  early  revolution  marked  by  such 
violence  or  absence  of  violence  as  the  wrath  of  man  or  the 
peace  of  God  may  be  able  to  throw  into  the  tipping  scale 
of  balanced  destiny. 

And  here  we  have  in  a  nutshell  the  final  answer  to  the 
question:  "What  is  true  Conservatism  and  what  is  true 
Radicalism?"  There  is  a  Radicalism  which  rings  untrue 
because  it  interprets  democracy  as  being  a  dead  level  and 
a  low  level.  It  starts  with  the  proposition  that  the  lowly 
man  has  the  same  rights  as  the  man  of  high  degree.  This 
is  a  true  premise.  But  in  the  practical  working  out  of 
that  premise  there  is  a  hidden  suggestion  that  all  men  be- 
ing equal  means  that  all  men  shall  occupy  the  same  level. 
True,  again,  but  which  level?  Ah,  here  is  the  most  seri- 
ous question  which  can  ever  face  the  voter.  Be  careful 
how  you  decide  upon  that  level.  Is  it  to  be  the  level  of 
an  effete  monarchy  carried  into  our  land  by  hordes  of 


NOBILITY    OF    MANHOOD  135 

men  and  women  who  have  no  opportunity  to  grow?  Is 
that  the  level  we  Americans  desire  to  attain  in  our  striv- 
ing for  the  true  democracy  ?  The  level  of  the  Continental 
Sabbath,  of  the  Continental  regulation  of  the  sex  ques- 
tion? The  level  of  the  Continental  system  of  an  aristoc- 
racy of  wealth  and  all  the  absurdity,  to  use  the  mildest 
term,  which  that  involves  ?  Or  is  it  the  level,  that  higher 
level,  which  lay  dormant  in  the  hearts  of  our  Puritan 
fathers  and  Pilgrim  mothers  ?  That  higher  level  of  mor- 
als, of  principle,  of  moral  and  ethical  courage  that 
marked  the  life,  the  words  and  the  farewell  message  of 
the  Father  of  His  Country? 

Decide  in  your  own  mind  what  level  it  is  that  you  are 
working  for,  ye  friends  of  Radicalism.  There  is  a  dead 
and  a  low  level  which  it  is  entirely  possible  to  obtain,  but 
is  the  obtainment  worthy  and  will  it  be  satisfactory  when 
it  comes  about  ?  There  is  a  level  to  be  obtained ;  it  is  the 
medium  line  formed  by  the  determination  of  the  man  in 
the  trench  to  have  for  his  children  opportunities  which  he 
himself  had  not,  and  by  the  co-operation  of  the  man  in 
the  auto,  who  realizes  that  Burns  voiced  a  truth  of  tre- 
mendous import  when  he  sang  "A  man's  a  man  for  a' 
that  and  a»  that." 

And  the  Conservative  is  not  doing  his  wisest  when  he 
tries  to  make  others  understand  that  the  dignity  of  privi- 
lege consists  in  the  amassing  of  wealth;  the  inglorious 
search  for  an  ancestral  tree,  the  roots  and  branches  of 
which  he  takes  pains  to  garnish  with  oblivion;  or  the 
fawning  imitation  of  a  foreign  aristocracy,  which  holds 
together  by  means  of  artificial  restrictions  and  the  un- 
natural cement  of  quasi-criminal  copartnerships.  We 
have  no  such  aristocracy  in  America,  nor  can  it  live  in  the 
air  of  freedom  and  equal  opportunity  which  blows 
through  the  hallways  of  our  history  from  the  mountain 


136  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

peaks  of  solid  sense  whereon  were  dictated  the  words  of 
our  Declaration  of  Independence  and  our  Constitution. 

But  there  is  nobility  of  manhood  and  of  purpose  for 
which  true  Conservatism  stands  and  must  stand.  It  must 
stand  for  the  right  to  the  entertainment  of  high  ideals. 
If  its  hands  are  free  from  the  arduous  heaviness  of  actual 
toil,  let  those  hands  be  turned  toward  the  attainment  of 
high  ideals  of  manhood  and  of  womanhood  along  such 
lines  of  activity  as  normally  and  readily  present  them- 
selves to  the  man  of  high  purpose  and  the  woman  of 
sweet  desire.  Let  them  create  an  atmosphere  of  clean 
and  noble  and  lofty  ideals ;  let  them  uphold  the  hands  of 
poet  and  seer;  of  the  men  and  women  who  dream  royal 
dreams  of  the  ultimate  heights  which  humanity  can  and 
shall  attain.  And  when  the  time  comes  that  their  affairs 
are  in  such  shape  that  they  can  have  before  them  hours 
and  days  of  leisure,  let  those  hours  be  occupied  with 
thought  of  how  the  uplift  of  the  mass,  that  ultimate  up- 
lift which  must  needs  come,  can  be  furthered  and  its  ad- 
vent and  its  blessing  hastened. 


EGOTISM  137 


CHAPTER  XV 

EGOTISM,  THE  PIVOTAL  DEAD  CENTRE  OF  MORAL  INERTIA, 
NOW   GIVING   WAY   TO    ALTRUISM. 

AS  we  study  physical  forces,  the  first  one  we  note 
as  everywhere  prevalent  is  gravitation.    We  have 
no  very  definite  idea  as  to  what  gravitation  really 
is.    We  know  that  it  is  something  which  makes  an  apple 
or  a  stone  fall  to  the  ground.    This  begets  an  idea  that  it 
is  a  downward  tendency  of  force.  That  it  makes  water 
run  down  hill ;  that  it  makes  water  seek  its  level. 

This  "downward"  tendency  holds  its  own  in  the  mind 
until  we  begin  to  puzzle  about  the  earth  being  a  huge 
globe  hung  in  space  and  then  drop  a  pebble  to  the  ground 
at  night.  That  pebble  is  evidently  falling  upward,  if  at 
the  same  hour  of  the  day  it  was  falling  downward.  For 
regulating  relative  direction  by  the  sun,  as  we  uncon- 
sciously do,  we  were  standing  head  up  in  the  day  time, 
but  we  hang  feet  up  at  night.  Consequently,  the  pebble 
falling  toward  the  feet  at  night  is  falling  upward.  The 
scientist  was  therefore  early  compelled  to  assume  a  dead 
centre  somewhere  in  the  globe,  toward  which  all  things 
naturally  fall,  and  with  that  dead  centre,  which  he  loca- 
ted several  degrees  south  of  the  actual  centre  of  the  earth 
and  a  little  to  one  side  of  the  axis,  he  rested  fairly  con- 
tent. I  say,  fairly  content,  because  the  dead  centre  and 
its  gravitational  possibilities  really  leave  quite  a  few 
things,  such  as  the  fact  that  the  ocean  does  not  fly  off 
the  earth  at  a  tangent  and  a  few  other  items,  large  and 
small,  altogether  unexplained.  But  it  serves  as  a  general 


138  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

theory  fairly  well,  if  we  assume  that  things,  if  let  go, 
tend  to  fall  toward  some  common  dead  centre,  or  deadly 
level. 

This  thought,  of  course,  involves  its  converse,  namely, 
that  all  other  forces  must  virtually  or  potentially  act 
against  this  dead  centre  gravitation.  If  I  lift  a  stone; 
if  I  pump  water  into  a  tank ;  if  I  dam  it  up  against  its 
tendency  to  run  down  hill ;  if  I  hurl  a  railroad  train  along 
over  tracks ;  if  I  catch  the  wind  in  sails  and  thereby  sail  a 
boat ;  if  I  generate  steam,  electricity,  magnetism,  in  fact, 
any  other  utilizable  force,  I  counteract  gravitation.  I 
make  things  do  that  which,  if  left  alone,  they  will  stop 
doing.  Consequently  every  other  force,  utilized  in  any 
of  a  thousand  possible  ways,  is  the  opposite  of  gravita- 
tion, of  the  dead  centre,  of  inertia ;  and  gravitation  is  the 
negative  of  all  other  forces.  Consequently,  again,  as 
soon  as  activity  ceases,  the  force  of  the  deadly  level  be- 
comes operative.  If  I  stop  giving  my  garden  attention  it 
will  fill  in  with  weeds ;  if  I  give  the  culture  of  my  mental 
garden  no  attention  it  will  fill  with  rank  weeds  of  gossip, 
profanity,  "loose  talk"  and  other  mental  purslane  and 
crabgrass.  If  I  let  a  municipality  run  to  weeds  its  offices 
will  be  filled  by  slipshod  idleness,  and  its  affairs  will  grow 
rank  in  more  ways  than  one.  If  the  same  thing  is  done 
with  a  State  or  with  a  Federal  government  these  govern- 
ments will  show  the  same  symptoms. 

The  fact  is,  that  all  things  tend  naturally  to  the  weed 
condition ;  toward  the  dead  centre ;  toward  mental  or  mor- 
al inertia,  unless  constantly  guarded  and  "tilled"  by 
those  who  feel  that  every  force,  to  be  a  useful  force  at  all, 
must  counteract  the  pristine  force  of  "gravitation." 

In  individual  characters  we  call  this  dead  centre  "ego- 
tism." For  as  God  created  a  dead  centre  about  which 
each  earth  in  the  universe  shall  revolve,  so  he  created  a 


EGOTISM  139 

dead  centre  about  which  each  human  mind  should  revolve, 
and  this  dead  centre  is  the  "Ego"  or  the  "Proprium"  of 
the  philosopher.  That  is,  our  natural  tendency  is  to  re- 
volve about  certain  needs,  which  early  impress  themselves 
upon  all  the  various  layers  of  our  consciousness,  upon  our 
"stream  of  consciousness,"  upon  our  subliminal  self  and 
upon  our  subconsciousness.  They  clothe  themselves  in  the 
familiar  sentences:  "A  man  must  live,"  "A  man  must 
eat,"  "Look  after  number  one,"  "No  one  else  will  do  it 
for  you,"  "Every  man  for  himself  and  the  devil  take  the 
hindmost."  These  are  the  same  in  all  languages  and 
among  all  nations,  and  involve  the  recognition,  made 
more  or  less  apparent  to  the  possessor  of  the  "said  natural 
mind"  by  the  force  of  circumstance  and  the  innuendo  of 
environment. 

It  is  therefore  quite  true  that  the  tendency  of  Nature  is 
toward  egotism.  Nature  compels  one  to  realize  that  he 
needs  food ;  that  he  needs  clothing ;  that  he  needs  shelter, 
and  so  forth.  It  emphasizes  personal  needs  in  the  most 
merciless  ways.  And  the  early  years  of  life  and  the  early 
conditions  of  society  are  necessarily  egotistic.  But  if 
Nature  emphasizes  the  needs  of  the  ego,  the  "spirit"  em- 
phasizes with  equal  persistence  and  tenacity  the  "needs" 
of  the  "other  man."  We  have  so  long  thought  of  "spirit" 
as  some  unnatural  or  supernatural  thing  that  we  have 
failed  to  realize  that  one  of  the  prime  manifestations  of 
"spirit"  is  society. 

For  if  Nature  turns  her  attention  and  the  attention  of 
the  individual  to  self,  then  spirit  must  needs,  by  the  very 
law  of  the  converse,  turn  the  attention  of  itself  and  of  the 
individual  to  the  "other  fellow."  We  have  so  long  thought 
of  "spirit"  as  synonymous  with  "ghost"  and  "spook" 
that  this  simple  reversion  to  its  normal  interpretation 
gives  a  sense  of  shock.  And  there  may  be  quite  serious 


140  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

objection  brought  to  this  interpretation  of  "spirit."  Yet 
careful  and  persistent  study  of  the  line  of  investigation 
set  forth  in  these  chapters  will  bear  out  this  return  to  its 
primitive  meaning.  At  any  rate,  let  it  be  admitted,  for 
the  time  being,  that  man  can  either  turn  his  attention  to 
himself  or  he  can  turn  it  to  the  other  man.  Let  us  call  the 
attention  turned  to  himself  "egotism,"  and  the  attention 
turned  to  the  other  man  "altruism,"  and  we  have  the  two 
dominant  forces  which  control  human  affairs ;  one  called 
"inertia"  and  the  other  "energy"  in  physics. 

Now  stop  for  a  moment  more  on  the  point  at  which 
man  naturally  and  normally  turns  from  the  attention  to 
self  to  the  attention  to  the  other  man — to  the  point 
where  he  stands  at  the  parting  of  the  ways  between  the 
real  natural  and  the  real  spiritual  life. 

Take  a  young  man  who  has  just  left  his  boss  and  set 
up  for  himself.  What  has  happened?  There  is  subtle 
change  in  his  attitude.  Before  he  set  up  his  own  business, 
he  was  good-naturedly  careless.  If  things  did  not  go 
exactly  right,  he  might  lose  his  job,  but  he  could  soon 
find  another.  So  he  grew  more  or  less  unreservedly  saucy 
toward  the  people  who  objected  to  things  that  went 
wrong,  or  he  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  stated  calmly 
that  he  was  obeying  orders  and  had  no  personal  respon- 
sibility. But  as  soon  as  he  began  to  work  upon  his  own 
business,  the  man  to  whom  he  tried  to  sell  something,  or 
the  man  from  whom  he  hoped  to  obtain  a  contract,  or  the 
man  whom  he  expected  to  have  as  his  customer  or  patron, 
rather  than  let  the  man  across  the  way  have  him,  loomed 
large  and  larger.  In  fact,  when  he  stopped  working  for 
anybody  and  set  up  for  himself,  he  began  to  reckon  with 
the  "other  man."  And  the  more  one  digs  down  into  the 
fundamentals  of  society,  the  more  one  finds  that  over  half 
our  life  is  lived  because  of  the  other  man ;  because  we  do 


EGOTISM  141 

not  want  to  offend  him;  because  we  do  not  want  his  en- 
mity ;  we  do  not  want  his  opposition ;  we  want  his  respect, 
his  sympathy,  his  love. 

And  so,  as  we  grow  away  from  the  crudity  of  youth  or 
of  the  absence  of  responsibility,  we  grow  naturally 
toward  the  amenity  of  maturer  life  and  toward  the  sense 
of  consideration  and  of  responsibility,  which  it  generates. 
We  should  now  feel  prepared  to  enter  upon  the  same 
force  of  egotism,  as  it  manifests  itself  in  the  aggregate, 
but  before  we  do  so  it  may  be  well  to  give  the  student  an 
idea  of  how  to  trace  a  force. 

Every  force  is  traced  by  its  manifestations.  No  one 
has  ever  seen  a  force  as  such.  It  must  always  be  studied 
by  the  results  obtained  by  it  or  from  it.  In  thus  studying 
a  force  it  is  best  to  apply  to  the  investigation  some  law 
of  mathematics  to  give  the  various  steps  taken  in  the  in- 
vestigation surety  and  conciseness.  If  we  had  a  number 
of  fractions  to  handle  in  mathematics,  we  would  find 
first  a  common  factor  or  a  common  denominator.  Some 
number  or  quantity,  to  which  all  the  various  fractions 
would  stand  in  some  determinable  relation.  Thus,  if  I 
desired  to  add  one-seventh  and  one-fifth,  and  three- 
eighths,  I  should  find  some  number  which  could  be  divided 
by  seven,  five  and  eight.  In  the  same  way,  if  I  am  making 
an  effort  to  trace  some  relationship  between  any  of  the 
fractional  manifestations  of  forces  extant  in  the  world  of 
matter,  I  should  try  to  find  some  common  factor,  some 
common  multiple,  some  common  divisor,  some  common 
denominator.  In  fact,  I  should  try  to  find  some  one  thing 
that  they  all  have  in  common.  If  now  I  ask  a  scientist  the 
question  about  any  series  of  physical  forces:  "What 
have  they  in  common?"  his  answer  would  probably  and 
readily  be :  "They  have  several  things  in  common.  They 
are  all,  so  far  as  we  know,  rectilinear ;  they  all  start  out 


142  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

from  a  given  point  and  travel  in  right  lines  through  vor- 
tices toward  another  point;  they  are  all  subject  to  modi- 
fication by  other  forces ;  they  can  all  be  transmuted  one 
into  the  other ;  they  all  vibrate." 

Let  us  take  the  last  common  factor.  The  student  real- 
izes, of  course,  that  light  is  a  method  of  vibration;  that 
heat  is  vibration ;  that  sound  is  vibration ;  that  electricity 
is  vibration,  and  so  forth.  Hence  he  has  a  common 
measure,  and  he  can  begin  at  any  point  in  the  scale  and 
show  the  relation  between  the  number  of  vibrations  called 
sound  and  between  the  number  called  heat  and  the  num- 
ber called  light  and  so  forth.  He  can  trace  the  substances 
and  conditions  required  by  each  of  these  various  series  of 
vibrations — how  heat  and  sound  require  air;  how  light 
requires  something  called  ether,  and  so  forth.  In  other 
words,  the  search  for  a  common  factor,  for  some  one 
thing  which  the  forces  to  be  studied  have  in  common,  is 
the  first  step  in  the  acquirement  of  useful  knowledge 
about  the  force  to  be  studied.  Now,  let  us  look  for  that 
manifestation  of  human  force  which  acts  like  egotism  in 
the  individual.  How  does  egotism  act  in  the  individual  ? 
It  revolves  always  about  man  himself  and  his  needs.  These 
may,  in  some  instances,  be  elaborated  to  cover  his  family, 
his  wife,  his  children,  his  father,  his  mother,  but  in  each 
instance  these  other  words  simply  stand  for  an  enlarge- 
ment of  the  ego.  The  man  works  for  himself,  he  talks 
for  himself,  he  ingratiates  himself,  he  uses  his  friends  for 
himself.  In  fact,  there  does  not  really  exist  any  other 
person  in  his  world  but  himself. 

Now  take  any  one  factor  in  civic  life,  with  which  you 
have  grown  familiar.  As  an  example,  take  the  word 
"vote,"  and  apply  it  to  the  study  of  a  definite  human 
force.  When  we  undertake  to  get  to  the  bottom  of  a  va- 
riety of  unpleasant  experiences,  which  we  have  had  dur- 


EGOTISM  143 

ing  the  past  few  years,  we  find  them  all  to  run  out  into 
the  words  "vote  for  him."  For  some  reason  the  G.  A.  R., 
that  body  of  men  who  fought  for  their  country,  and  who 
doubtless  deserve  all  the  kindly  hero-worship  lavished  up- 
on them,  has  been  placed  upon  a  vicarious  and  precarious 
pension  list,  which  shows  a  vitality  that  startles  even  the 
American,  accustomed  as  he  is  to  the  almost  infinite  sup- 
ply of  resource  of  a  gigantically  prosperous  country. 
Why?  Because  somebody  wanted  the  G.  A.  R.  to  "vote 
for  him."  The  colored  man  has  been  thrust  into  a  posi- 
tion of  discomfort  and  annoyance  to  himself  and  to  his 
white  brother ;  he  occupies  the  anomalous  position  of  hav- 
ing the  same  rights  as  the  white  man,  yet  those  rights  are 
everywhere  denied  him.  He  is  not  wanted  in  the  factory, 
he  is  not  wanted  in  the  white  man's  club.  He  is  not  wanted 
at  the  white  man's  table,  and  when  the  President  braves 
that  opinion  or  sentiment,  he  is  roundly  scored  for  it. 
But  he  may  "vote  for  him."  Who  is  there  back  of  the 
colored  man  who  wants  that  vote?  Why  was  all  this  use- 
less anomaly  engendered?  Why  could  not  the  colored 
man  have  been  permitted  slowly  to  grow  up  to  the  larger 
responsibility  of  citizenship?  It  was  because  somebody 
wanted  his  vote.  And  what  did  he  want  it  for?  That  he 
might  be  put  in  office  and  gather  the  spoils,  which  Jack- 
son admitted  into  our  political  system,  for  which  gratu- 
ity we  have  had  reason  to  be  sorry  ever  since. 

And  when  the  foreigner  came  to  our  shores  what  hap- 
pened first?  By  all  sorts  of  direct  but  devious  ways  he 
was  hurriedly  naturalized.  Before  he  could  realize  our 
institutions  and  what  he  was  voting  for  he  was  voted. 
Why?  Because  somebody  wanted  him  to  "vote  for  him." 
And  then  in  the  West  on  the  sandlots  there  arose  the 
most  absurd  cry  that  ever  was  raised.  The  cry  of  the 
"yellow  peril."  Because  of  some  local  "sandlot"  difficulty, 


144  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

which  has  since  then  vanished  into  thin  air,  there  was  a 
cry  of  "Down  with  the  heathen  Chinee."  At  first  it  was 
in  a  spirit  of  rough  sport,  which  was  common  during  the 
days  when  the  Far  West  hovered  on  the  ragged  edge  of 
civilization  and  miners  "shot  up"  the  town  for  the  fun  of 
the  thing.  The  cry  was  then  taken  up  in  sober  earnest  by 
"labor."  It  may  be  safely  assumed  that  labor  was  in  that 
particular  instance  deluded.  But  the  cry  was  taken  up. 
Why?  Because  somebody  wanted  "the  labor  vote." 
Somebody  wanted  labor  to  "vote  for  him."  And  a  similar 
cry  was  taken  up  against  the  "Octopus"  of  the  railroads 
in  the  Far  West,  because  of  the  farmer  and  because  some- 
body wanted  the  "farmer  vote." 

Everywhere  the  same  common  factor — "to  vote  for 
him."  Just  as  in  the  study  of  physical  forces  we  found 
a  common  factor,  "vibration,"  so  here  we  find  a  common 
factor,  "the  ballot,"  and  back  of  it  the  huge  manifesta- 
tion of  the  force  of  egotism,  the  politician. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  this  chapter  began  with  the 
premise  that  egotism  is  perfectly  natural.  Hence  the 
politician  is  "perfectly  natural."  He  is  decidedly  un- 
spiritual.  He  is  the  manifestation  of  mental  and  moral 
inertia.  He  appears  as  soon  as  the  good  citizen  rests 
supinely  at  home  and  does  not  concern  himself  with  the 
affairs  of  his  town  or  his  county  or  his  State  or  his  Coun- 
try. He  appears  as  the  weed  appears  in  the  garden  when 
the  gardener  neglects  the  hoe.  And  he  appears  for  the 
same  reason.  As  all  things  deteriorate  when  not  con- 
stantly under  supervision,  as  a  garden  runs  to  weeds,  so 
civics  run  to  politics,  when  not  cared  for  and  attended. 

But  it  was  also  premised  that  egotism  is  a  crude 
and  preparatory  state.  It  must  needs  presently 
give  way  to  the  consideration  of  the  "other  man."  Our 
entire  social  structure  passes  from  a  condition  of  ego- 


EGOTISM  145 

tism  to  a  condition  of  altruism,  as  the  life  of  the  indi- 
vidual passes  from  egotism  to  altruism.  As  a  man  when 
he  turns  from  employe  to  employer  finds  the  "other  man" 
looming  large  upon  his  horizon,  so  in  civic  work  and  in 
citizenship,  when  American  society  turns  from  its  con- 
templation of  itself  to  its  contemplation  of  the  "other 
man,"  it  will  naturally  and  normally  turn  from  the  nat- 
ural condition  of  egotism,  typified  by  the  politician  to 
the  "spiritual"  condition  of  altruism,  tentatively  typified 
by  the  men  and  women  we  call  "civic  workers,"  "social 
workers,"  "reformers"  and  similar  names. 

And  the  assumption  of  this  book  is  that  that  stage  has 
been  reached  and  that  the  doom  of  the  politician  has  been 
sealed  and  his  deathknell  sounded.  The  assumption  is 
based  upon  the  fact  that  the  Race  has  attained  its  Man- 
hood ;  that  we  have  come  to  a  point  in  international  life 
where  men  can  speak  calmly  of  international  polity; 
when  they  can  formulate  plans  for  the  actual  attainment 
of  "a  federation  of  the  world;"  when  it  is  no  longer  a 
dream  that  the  nations  of  the  world  will  presently  be  fed- 
erated in  the  same  way  in  which  the  States  of  the  Union 
were  federated  into  the  government  known  as  the  "United 
States."  For  the  dim  shadow  of  all  the  nations  of  the 
world  as  one  huge  "Federation  of  Nations,"  a  "world 
family"  is  already  trembling  on  the  threshold  of  race- 
consciousness. 

America  is  taking  her  place  among  the  nations  of  the 
earth.  We  are  no  longer  living  in  that  supreme  isolation 
so  long  secured  by  our  position  between  two  vast  oceans ; 
ever  since  our  soldiers  appeared  within  the  walls  of  Chi- 
na ;  ever  since  President  Roosevelt  called  the  Portsmouth 
Conference;  ever  since  the  Spanish  fleet  was  brushed 
calmly  from  the  face  of  the  waters,  we  have  awakened  to 
the  "other  man"  and  to  the  fact  of  the  presence  of  the 


146  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

other  man,  and  to  the  fact  that  it  is  essential  that  we 
should  assume  certain  definite  attitudes  toward  him,  dif- 
ferent from  our  hitherto  assumed  attitude  of  humorously 
ignoring  his  existence.  He  is  to  be  reckoned  with,  not  be- 
cause of  our  weakness,  but  because  of  the  very  fact  of 
our  enormous  strength  and  resourcefulness.  And  there 
lies  the  difficulty.  For  if  we  were  a  weak  "world  power" 
it  would  be  easy  to  know  what  we  must  do.  We  would 
have  to  arm,  and  to  arm,  and  to  arm.  But,  being  a  giant 
and  the  strongest  power  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  it  be- 
comes obligatory  to  think  seriously  of  the  very  opposite 
thing,  and  to  "reckon"  how  we  can  disarm,  and  disarm, 
and  disarm,  and  to  use  our  soldiers  and  our  sailors  only 
as  an  international  police  force.  Not  to  fight,  but  to  pro- 
tect the  interests  of  the  world. 

It  is  on  the  ground  of  this  palpable  growth  of  the  new 
internationalism,  of  this  growth  of  the  recognition  of  the 
"other  man"  in  the  shape  of  the  "other  nation,"  that  this 
book  assumes  that  we  have  as  a  Nation  reached  the  point 
where  egotism  changes  to  altruism,  and  likewise  assumes 
the  equally  deducible  conclusion  that  we  have  come  to  the 
virtual  end  of  the  incarnation  of  national  egotism,  which 
we  have  learned  to  call  the  "politician." 

For  during  the  earlier  and  cruder  stages  of  a  nation's 
life,  the  egotism  of  national  life  grows  legitimately  in- 
carnate. But  when  the  national  life  advances  to  its  ma- 
turer  and  riper  condition,  that  cruder  form  of  egotism 
will  vanish  as  naturally  as  did  the  mastodon  from  the  pre- 
glacial  ranges  of  Sweden,  and  the  bison  from  the  wind- 
swept prairies  of  our  own  Northwest.  They  pass  before 
the  encroachment  of  the  "tide  of  civilization"  and  we  ask 
our  students  to  note  closely  the  gradual  extinction  of  a 
species  which  will  take  place  before  their  eyes  during  the 
next  two  or  three  decades. 


COMMERCIALISM  147 


CHAPTER  XVI 

THE  GIANT   EGO   OF   COMMERCIALISM,    OTHERWISE   KNOWN 
AS    THE    TRUST,    IN    ITS    THREE    FORMS. 

IF  we  compare  boyhood  and  youth  we  are  immediately 
struck  by  a  number  of  salient  features  which  they 
have  in  common,  and  another  series  in  which  they 
differ.      Leaving   out   of   consideration   at   present  the 
features  which  the  boy  and  the  youth  have  in  common  let 
me  emphasize  a  few  in  which  they  differ. 

If  the  growing  boy  differs  from  the  youth  in  any  one 
thing  it  is  in  the  matter  of  appetite.  The  normal  boy  is 
most  essentially  healthy  in  his  appetite.  In  fact,  it  may 
be  said  of  him  that  he  inclines  toward  greed  in  the  mat- 
ter of  food  supply.  He  wants  a  little,  or  rather,  he 
wants  a  lot  of  everything  on  the  table,  and  he  is  not  al- 
ways certain  when  he  has  enough.  Youth  differs  from 
boyhood  in  the  fact  that  its  appetite  is  not  necessarily 
as  ravenous  as  that  of  the  boy.  It  may  grow  even  some- 
what choice  in  the  matter  of  food. 

So  when  boys  get  together  to  play  a  game  the  first 
item  is  noise  and  an  egregious  lot  of  it.  Turn  a  group  of 
boys  loose  in  a  field  for  a  game  of  ball  and  the  first  step  is 
babel  undiluted.  And  immediately  after  this  explosion 
comes  the  squabble  as  to  choice  and  selection  of  candi- 
dates. When  youth  plays  its  games  it  is  less  boisterous  as 
to  the  first  entrance  upon  the  ground.  In  fact,  the  ath- 
letes of  a  college  are  inclined  to  enter  the  field  rather  in 
silence,  and  if  any  noise  be  deemed  necessary,  it  must 
come  from  the  "bleachers."  The  matter  of  choice  of 


148  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

candidates  being  already  settled  and  determined,  that 
feature  is  eliminated,  and  in  its  place  come  the  tactics  of 
the  game,  the  twirling  of  the  ball,  so  that  the  player  most 
interested  in  that  ball  may  not  know  exactly  where  it  will 
be  at  a  certain  point  of  time  and  space ;  or  the  tactics  of 
the  flying  wedge  and  other  devices  which  youth  has 
thought  of  as  being  essential  in  the  game  of  football,  for 
instance. 

If  the  student  will  turn  these  features  of  boyhood  and 
youth  over  to  the  field  of  socio-economics,  he  will  find  that 
the  politician  represents  egotism  in  its  boyhood  form 
and  that  the  trust  represents  egotism  in  its  youthful 
form,  as  yet,  and  I  wish  most  earnestly  to  emphasize  this 
modifying  phrase,  since  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance. 
Youth  and  boyhood  are  preliminary  to  manhood,  and 
they  must  needs  be  passed  through.  No  individual  or- 
ganism, and  no  organized  aggregate,  can  leap  over  either 
of  these  two  preliminary  steps  to  manhood.  They  are 
both  perfectly  natural,  and  therefore  absolutely  to  be 
reckoned  with. 

The  politician  represents  the  boyhood  stage,  because 
when  he  takes  up  his  stand  in  the  game  of  life  it  is  taken 
up  frankly  and  candidly  on  the  ground  of  greed.  He  is 
never  in  political  office  for  his  health.  Health  in  his  case, 
as  in  the  boy's,  manifests  itself  in  greed  for  supplies.  He 
wants  all  there  is  on  the  municipal,  the  county,  the  State 
or  the  Federal  table,  or  as  much  of  it  as  he  can  lay  hands 
on,  and  he  is  not  always  certain  when  he  has  enough.  And 
when  he  begins  to  play  the  game  of  politics  he  leaps  bois- 
terously into  the  ring.  The  fact  that  he  hires  a  brass 
band  and  a  group  of  loud-mouthed  spellbinders  to  do  the 
"boistering"  for  him  does  not  alter  the  figure  seriously. 
And  when  the  brass  band  explosion  is  over  he  wrangles 
as  to  the  selection  of  candidates.  How  well  I  remember 


COMMERCIALISM  149 

when,  as  a  boy,  one  of  us  used  to  swing  the  bat  about 
himself  and  throw  it  to  the  next  boy,  and  then  they 
measured  hands  on  the  handle,  and  there  was  a  halo  of 
glory  about  the  face  of  the  last  boy  if  he  could,  after  the 
last  handbreadth,  swing  the  bat  about  his  head  once  by 
what  he  later  in  life  called  "a  bare  majority."  Later  in 
life  he  substitutes  the  ballot  and  the  voting  machine  for 
the  handbreadths  on  his  bat. 

The  more  one  runs  the  eye  over  the  picture  and  com- 
pares the  one  with  the  other,  the  more  one  grows  con- 
vinced that  the  politician  represents  the  ego  of  the  nation 
in  its  boyish  condition.  Now  note  the  trust.  It  enters 
into  the  arena  quietly  like  the  college  athletes.  If  there 
is  any  noise  it  will  have  to  come  from  an  enthusiastic 
series  of  bleachers  in  shape  of  newspapers  and  skilfully 
worded  newspaper  advertising.  No  one  is  asked  to  elect 
its  officers.  That  is  attended  to  without  invitation  to  the 
public.  It  is  a  serious  matter  and  it  is  quietly  done. 
There  is  no  brass  band.  There  is  need  of  none.  And 
when  the  game  of  socio-economics  begins,  the  tactics  are 
the  same.  The  man  most  interested  in  the  rise  and  fall  of 
the  ball  (or  of  the  stock,  if  you  prefer  the  maturer  word), 
must  be  alert  of  eye  and  swift  of  determination,  if  he 
wants  to  be  at  the  exact  spot  of  time  and  space  to  meet 
the  ball  in  its  oncoming.  He  needs  training  which  he 
rarely  gets  outside  of  Wall  Street,  a  fact  which  so  many 
energetic  players  forget  who  think  they  know  things 
which  they  do  not  know,  since  the  knowing  of  them  re- 
quires special  training.  This  is  obtainable  only  in  one 
spot,  but  they  often  forget  it  to  their  detriment,  though 
not  necessarily  to  the  detriment  of  the  other  players  of 
the  game.  The  thought  of  the  untrained  player  trying 
the  game  resembles  too  much  the  matching  of  a  kinder- 
garten nine  against  a  college  team  to  require  comment 


150  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

upon  any  feature  of  it  except  its  pathos.  And  that  is  too 
palpable  for  words. 

Again,  if  the  trust  takes  up  the  other  game,  which  is 
supposed  to  be  played  with  a  football  (the  ball  being 
usually  conceived  humorously  by  cartoonists  as  a  small 
man  with  large  glasses,  labeled  "The  Common  People,") 
there  is  a  flying  wedge,  or  some  other  form  of  tactics, 
which  is  gradually  beginning  to  call  as  much  attention  to 
its  brutality  as  did  its  symbolic  predecessor  before  the 
new  football  rules  went  into  effect.  Let  me  say  right 
here,  that  I  firmly  believe  that  those  concerned  will  soon 
revise  the  rules  of  the  trust  game  in  the  same  way  and 
for  somewhat  the  same  reasons.  That  it  is  in  its  most 
brutal  form  now,  and  that  the  little  man  is  jumped  on 
and  trampled  upon  mercilessly  under  the  guise  of  a  fair 
game  no  one  doubts  for  a  moment. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  follow  the  resemblances  be- 
tween the  "boyhood"  politician  and  the  youth  "trust" 
further,  but  enough  has  been  said  for  our  readers  to  carry 
the  analogy  as  far  as  they  please  to  carry  it.  Nor  is  it 
the  playful  analogy  which  it  seems  to  be.  The  deeper  the 
thought  expended  upon  it,  the  more  seriously  can  the 
analogy  be  taken. 

It  may,  therefore,  for  the  purposes  of  this  chapter,  be 
assumed  that  the  first,  or  boy  manifestation  of  our  na- 
tional egotism  was  the  politician  and  that  he  is  followed 
in  a  perfectly  natural  way  by  a  more  elaborate  national 
egotism,  which  is  called  the  "trust."  This  development 
may  be  called  perfectly  natural,  since  it  follows  from  our 
forms  of  development  as  naturally  as  the  creation  of  a 
river  follows  from  the  confluence  of  a  multitude  of  brooks 
and  streams.  There  is  nothing  unnatural  about  the  huge 
organizations  of  our  day,  except  their  overcapitalization. 
In  fact,  at  bottom  they  are  the  anticipated  form  of  econ- 


COMMERCIALISM  151 

omics,  for  which  the  Socialist  is  looking;  they  are  the 
natural  outcome  of  the  substitution  of  co-operation  for 
competition.  For,  if  the  trust  be  looked  at  in  its  ulti- 
mate analysis  and  stripped  of  its  external  vileness  of  de- 
meanor, of  the  brutality  complained  of  just  above,  it  will 
be  found  to  be  a  perfectly  legitimate  expression  of  co- 
operation and  of  its  substitution  for  competition. 

And  no  one,  who  has  any  knowledge  whatever  of  socio- 
economics,  will  admit  for  a  moment  the  truth  of  the  old 
adage,  that  competition  is  the  life  of  trade,  if  competi- 
tion is  to  be  accepted  as  altogether  unrestricted  competi- 
tion. Unrestricted  competition  should  be  more  aptly 
termed  the  death  of  trade,  since  in  its  ultimate  analysis, 
it  means  cut-rate  work,  which  is  the  gentler  and  more 
courteous  term  for  "cut-throat"  work.  The  idea  of  com- 
petition is  by  nature  limited  to  certain  territories  and  cer- 
tain possibilities  and  does  not  extend  beyond  them.  Com- 
petition for  labor,  when  the  supply  of  labor  is  limited,  evi- 
dently means  that  certain  men  must  carry  their  labor  to 
market  without  a  possible  equivalent  for  it.  And  compe- 
tition, without  restriction,  in  trade,  means  that  the  man 
who  has  the  largest  amount  of  physical  strength  holds 
out.  The  smaller  man  dies  along  the  road.  In  other 
words,  competition  can  be  fair  only  where  two  or  more 
individuals  or  groups  of  individuals  are  equally  matched 
and  given  the  same  and  exactly  the  same  opportunity. 

Where  this  cannot  be  done — and  in  more  than  half  the 
conditions  of  life  it  cannot — competition  is  not  an  avail- 
able factor  for  progress.  But  combination  or  the  "trust" 
is  as  yet  (and  I  beg  the  reader  again  to  note  the  phrase) 
in  its  cruelly  brutal  form,  a  form  which  it  will  naturally 
lose  as  it  advances  from  the  exuberant  brutality  of  youth 
toward  the  maturer  fairness  and  sense  of  responsibility, 
which  comes  with  the  larger  manhood,  on  the  threshold  of 


152  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

which  we  stand.  As  yet  the  trust  is  frankly  and  disgust- 
ingly brutal.  It  uses  the  equivalent  of  the  flying  wedge 
called  in  political  parlance  the  feature  of  "standpatism ;" 
that  this  is  the  form  of  "solid  phalanx"  tactics  goes  with- 
out saying.  It  is  still  backed  by  partially  understood 
economic  laws  disguised  and  skilfully  disguised  as  tariff, 
high  tariff  and  tariff  for  revenue  and  other  keywords, 
which  seemed  unintelligible  to  most  of  our  statesmen  with 
the  exception  of  Mr.  McKinley,  whose  ideas  on  the  sub- 
ject were  the  most  rational  which  have  as  yet  been  made 
public.  And  before  we  have,  with  a  view  to  practical 
citizenship,  gone  into  a  careful  study  of  the  tariff,  of 
reciprocity  and  free  trade,  the  question  of  the  trust  will 
remain  a  question.  But  when  that  has  been  done,  the 
tremendous  volume  of  the  "trust"  river  formed  of  the 
vast  aggregation  of  numberless  channels  of  trade  and 
brooklets  and  streamlets  of  enterprise,  will  no  longer  be 
the  raging  torrent  it  is  now,  and  it  is  recognized  as  such 
an  aggregate  of  "water"  by  the  inerrancy  of  the  popular 
mind.  After  that  study  has  been  accomplished,  the  flow 
of  the  river  will  be  regulated  and  it  will  become  a  bless- 
ing to  those  located  along  its  banks.  It  is  by  no  means 
as  dangerous  a  torrent  as  it  seems  to  be  to  the  eye  that 
is  holden  by  fear  begotten  of  ignorance  or  of  unintelli- 
gence. 

I  have  no  desire  whatever  to  sing  the  praises  of  the 
trust.  My  desire  is  simply  to  call  attention  to  the  fact 
that  these  huge  combinations  of  capital  and  of  merchan- 
dise have  come  to  stay.  They  are  perfectly  legitimate 
products  of  our  present  form  of  civilization  and  of  the 
socio-economic  world.  But  that  they  are  now  in  an  in- 
tolerable form  of  youthful  exuberance,  based  upon  our 
primitive  ideas  of  a  tariff  for  the  protection  of  "infant" 
industries,  and  that  they  play  fast  and  loose  with  the 


COMMERCIALISM  153 

dominance  of  two  parties  in  the  field,  is  simply  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  game  they  are  playing  presupposes  certain 
boundaries.  Beyond  this  the  game  does  not  play.  That 
at  one  time  the  two  sides  in  the  game  are  called  Republi- 
can and  Democratic,  at  another,  labor  and  capital;  at 
yet  another,  employer  and  employe;  at  still  another, 
tariff  and  reciprocity  (or  free  trade),  and  by  yet  other 
names  at  yet  other  times,  makes  as  little  difference  to 
the  game  and  the  results  of  it  as  does  the  fact  that  at  one 
time  Harvard  plays  Yale  and  at  another  Cornell  plays 
Princeton.  The  rules  are  the  same ;  the  game  is  the  same ; 
the  tactics  are  the  same.  As  the  Good  Book  says  in  its 
quaint  language  of  long  ago,  "The  two  dreams  are  one 
dream." 

There  are,  however,  two  further  points  to  add.  It  is 
well  for  the  citizen,  in  his  pursuit  of  knowledge  and  es- 
pecially in  his  pursuit  of  the  knowledge  of  practical  citi- 
zenship, which  ultimately  leads  to  his  choice  of  principles, 
of  party,  of  measures  and  of  men,  to  recognize  the  trinity 
which  inevitably  appears  in  all  manifestations  of  life, 
whether  individual  or  aggregate.  In  this  case  he  has  the 
trust,  the  combine  (or  holding  company)  and  the  mon- 
opoly. The  two  first  seem  to  be,  from  all  appearances 
and  accounts,  good  but  boisterous  youths.  The  latter  is 
a  shifty  fellow,  who  needs  close  watching.  He  may  need 
stripes  and  lockstep  before  he  learns  to  behave.  In  other 
words,  the  trust  is  a  perfectly  normal  growth  of  our  in- 
dustrial system,  which  needs  regulation  and  assiduous 
cultivation  under  intelligent  and  less  sordid  leadership; 
the  combine  (in  its  most  perfected  form  of  "holding 
company")  wants  the  most  careful  cultivation,  since  it  is 
a  plant  of  exuberant  growth  and  one  that  requires  con- 
stant and  steady  pruning  and  trimming,  based  as  it  is  on 
estimated  values,  rather  than  on  actual  values,  which  are, 


154  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

or  should  be,  the  basic  elements  of  trust  building.  But 
monopoly,  handled  in  the  old  country  in  entirely  differ- 
ent ways  from  those  employed  here,  and  usually  associ- 
ated with  the  government,  and  probably  wisely  so,  re- 
quires the  most  painstaking  supervision  and  almost  in- 
cessant restriction,  unless  ways  can  be  found  to  make  it 
useful  for  the  public  good,  by  and  through  Federal  chan- 
nels. This  may  some  day  mean  government  ownership, 
in  such  cases  as  coal  fields,  oil  fields  and  the  like.  The 
tremendous  possibilities  involved  in  the  private  owner- 
ship of  such  sources  of  wealth  militate  against  all  other 
relationships  of  labor,  capital,  land  and  values,  unless 
wisely  and  intelligently  handled  by  all  the  people  for  all 
the  people,  which  is  a  paraphrase  of  government  own- 
ership. 

Meanwhile,  and  in  the  second  place,  whatever  is  done 
either  directly  or  indirectly  in  this  matter  should  be  done 
on  the  ground  of  two  general  propositions.  The  one 
is  that  which  guides  the  engineer  in  bridging  almost  im- 
possible gaps  of  traffic.  He  must  put  in  his  subway,  or 
his  tunnel,  or  his  new  bridge  in  the  most  natural  way 
possible,  utilizing  the  flow  of  tide  to  lift  his  structure 
into  place;  recognizing  the  silt  in  the  rock  when  he 
places  his  tunnels;  realizing  the  law  of  air  pressures 
when  he  sinks  his  caissons.  And  he  must  do  the  whole 
thing  without  interfering  with  traffic  in  any  way.  When 
next  you  travel,  note  what  the  engineers  are  doing  on 
the  line  of  railroad  over  which  you  travel.  They  are 
sinking  tunnels,  they  are  blasting,  they  are  bridging, 
they  are  boring,  they  are  building,  and  traffic  is  not  in 
any  serious  way  delayed.  Now  and  again  a  train  is 
compelled  to  wait  a  few  minutes,  but  almost  before  rest- 
less America  can  thrust  its  head  out  of  a  resisting  win- 
dow, the  cars  start  up  again.  And  they  do  so  because 


COMMERCIALISM  155 

the  traffic  on  the  road  requires  it.  Public  comfort,  one 
of  the  phases  of  the  tremendous  force  called  public 
opinion  or  public  sentiment  ( here  used  as  an  actual  force 
and  treated  as  one  would  treat  of  electricity  or  magnet- 
ism or  steam  or  gravitation),  calls  for  it. 

So  it  will  in  the  case  of  bridging  the  chasm  between 
the  last  stages  of  individual  enterprise  with  its  elaborate 
competition,  which  was  supposed  to  be  the  life  of  trade, 
but  which  in  many  instances  has  proved  the  death  of 
trade,  and  the  early  stages  of  sane  trust  management. 
It  must  be  done  without  serious  interference  with  trade 
conditions  and  economic  potentialities,  and  it  will  be  done 
with  a  view  to  having  the  youth,  now  overflowing  with 
a  rank  exuberance,  and  playing  a  violent  game  of  ball, 
with  the  general  public  as  the  ball,  curbed,  put  upon  its 
honor,  and  taught  to  be  a  respectable  and  law  abiding 
citizen.  For  it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  the  corpo- 
ration is  a  corporation;  that  it  is  a  body,  that  it  is  a 
citizen  and  that  it  can  be  made  to  be  a  law  abiding  citi- 
zen, as  readily  as  an  individual  can  be  so  trained.  It 
will  not  be  difficult  when  once  the  real  line  of  work  and 
the  real  line  of  least  resistance  along  which  this  can  be 
accomplished  shall  have  been  found. 

Nor  is  it  difficult  to  find  this  line.  In  fact,  that  iner- 
rant  subconsciousness  which  underlies  all  mass-thought 
and  therefore  all  race-thought,  has  already  guessed  it. 
It  has  called  the  thing  a  "trust."  I  am  aware  that  the 
name  came  about  apparently  by  chance.  But  the  stu- 
dent of  philosophy  takes  pleasure  in  denying  any  such 
thing  as  chance.  There  is  an  inerrant  perception  in  the 
names  which  popular  intuition  applies  to  things.  Take 
the  names  of  the  two  great  parties;  the  "Republican" 
(made  from  the  Latin  for  "public  affairs")  and  the 
Democratic ( made  from  the  Greek  for  "people's  power"), 


156  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

and  think  over  all  the  friends  you  can  recall  in  both 
great  parties,  and  see  whether  the  most  logical  thought 
would  care  to  change  these  perfectly  spontaneous  names, 
which  were  born  as  intuitively  as  the  word  "trust"  was 
born.  They  fit  as  accurately  as  though  they  had  been 
thought  out  for  centuries. 

We  know,  of  course,  that  the  first  movement  was  cre- 
ated and  named  from  the  fact  that  certain  men  were 
named  as  "trustees."  Now,  the  fact  is,  that  in  all  the 
quasi-public,  the  semi-public  utilities  corporations,  the 
central  body  is  just  that.  It  may  have,  in  the  exulta- 
tion of  its  overyouthful  vigor,  forgotten  it.  But  time 
will  bring  it  very  definitely  back  to  its  consciousness.  If 
need  be,  and  it  meet  with  any  great  and  hampering  ob- 
tuseness,  time  will  "hammer  it  in"  as  popular  language 
hath  it.  But  that  realization  will  not  now  be  very  long 
lost.  It  seems  almost  wholly  gone  in  some  of  our  great 
corporations,  but  it  will  be  vitalized  with  startling  rapid- 
ity, when  the  time  comes  for  that  vitalization,  and  it  will 
be  vivified  without  effort  on  the  part  of  any  individual 
or  group  of  men.  It  will  come  about  with  perfect  nat- 
uralness and,  as  we  usually  say,  of  itself.  Just  as  youth 
turns  to  manhood  with  perfect  naturalness,  so  will  ag- 
gregate youth,  or  the  trust,  turn  to  sober  manhood  by 
simply  being  faced  with  the  more  serious  problems,  which 
are  in  store  for  it. 

Legislation  may  play  some  little  part  in  it,  but  not  a 
very  large  part,  since  you  cannot  legislate  a  youth  into 
a  man,  although  you  may  set  a  period  of  years  after  the 
lapse  of  which  you  choose  to  consider  him  legally  a  man. 
But  he  will  not  really  be  a  man  until  he  has  felt  the  first 
serious  affairs  of  dawning  manhood,  and  has  had  a  hand- 
ful of  heavy  responsibilities  deprive  him  of  a  few  nights' 
sleep.  He  will  then  one  day  wake  a  man,  not  before. 


COMMERCIALISM  157 

And  the  suspicion  may  be  safely  entertained  that  the 
time  is  not  very  far  distant  when  such  awakening  is  in 
store  for  those  who  are  at  the  storm-centres  called 
"trusts." 

And  will  not  that  awakening  simply  mean  a  keen  reali- 
zation that  what  these  men  hold  is  a  "trusteeship?" 
That,  though  they  may  have  for  the  moment  forgotten 
it,  they  are  holding  public  property  and  public  opportu- 
nity, and  public  grants  and  public  gifts  in  trust  for 
the  people  and  that  they  will  be  ready  and — think  of 
it — willing  to  render  an  account  of  their  stewardship, 
when  such  accounting  is  called  for?  That  will  be  the 
day  of  manhood  for  the  trust. 


158  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 


CHAPTER  XVII 

RACE    DYNAMICS    AND    A    SURVEY    OF    THE    HUMAN    FORCE 
BACK    OF   THE    EVOLUTION    OF    SOCIETY. 

IN  coming  to  the  close  of  the  second  general  section 
of  our  work  in  the  study  of  practical  citizenship,  we 
ask  the  reader  to  follow  a  summary  of  what  has 
been  placed  before  him,  and  to  concentrate  into  a  unital 
thought  the  elaboration  of  previous  chapters. 

In  the  first  section  we  took  up  the  machinery  of  gov- 
ernment as  such,  somewhat  in  the  same  way  as  though 
we  had  taken  up  an  individual  body  and  shown  the  elab- 
orate machinery  of  its  organic  structure,  its  heart,  its 
lungs,  its  brain,  its  nervous  system  and  so  forth.  In  the 
second  section  we  took  up  the  consideration  of  the  forces 
which  run  the  machinery.  We  considered  egotism,  altru- 
ism, public  sentiment,  radicalism,  conservatism  and  other 
manifestations  as  such,  somewhat  in  the  same  way  as  we 
would  have  done  had  we  been  studying  the  forces  which 
drive  the  mechanism  of  an  individual  body,  such  as  the 
nervous  forces,  the  dynamics  of  the  mind,  with  its  in- 
hibitions, its  impulses,  its  derivative  manifestations — 
forces  running  from  physical  hunger  to  curiosity. 

It  seems  proper  to  close  this  second  section  with  a  sum- 
mary review  of  the  sum  total  of  forces,  which  we  have 
been  studying  as  running  the  machinery  of  the  body 
politic.  The  reader  will  recall  that  we  gave  a  tentative 
name  to  this  totality  of  force  in  the  eleventh  chapter  and 
designated  it  "public  sentiment"  and  "public  opinion." 
It  was  admitted  in  that  chapter,  that  these  names  were 


RACE    DYNAMICS  159 

vague,  but  it  was  also  maintained  that  the  tremendous 
reality,  the  giant  human  force  so  denominated,  was  a 
perfectly  comprehensible  and  "studiable"  thing.  If  the 
reader  will  gather  the  threads  of  the  intervening  chap- 
ters he  will  find  that  it  has  so  proved.  That,  though  it  is 
in  itself  an  intangible  and  invisible  force,  as  in  fact  is 
every  other  force,  physical  or  mental,  yet  its  results  and 
its  manifestations  lead  to  such  palpable  conclusions,  that 
there  is  no  avoiding  the  ultimate  analytic  sequence  cul- 
minating in  the  thought,  that  this  invisible  and  intangi- 
ble force  is  a  huge  entity,  a  thing  separate  and  separable 
from  the  individual  intelligence  of  man,  which  is  mov- 
ing along  intelligent  lines  for  the  accomplishment  of  an 
intelligent  purpose.  Writers  like  Maeterlinck,  in  his 
wonderful  work  on  the  "Life  of  the  Bee,"  realize  the  fact 
that  above  and  beyond  the  aggregate  body  of  the  hive 
— both  of  a  hive  of  bees  and  a  human  hive — lies  that  in- 
tangible but  purposeful  force  which  makes  bees  and  men 
do  things  for  which  they  have  no  immediate  reason,  but 
which  contains  and  involves  an  ulterior  and  ultimate  rea- 
son that  far  over-rides  the  littleness  of  the  immediate 
needs  and  requirements  of  environment,  inclination  and 
heredity.  Maeterlinck  calls  this  entity  that  lies  on  the 
edge  of  aggregate  consciousness,  the  "spirit  of  the  hive." 
The  Frenchman  calls  it,  as  it  hovers  on  the  edge  of  the 
consciousness  of  the  crowd,  "PEsprit  du  corps."  When 
it  manifests  itself  in  a  city,  we  call  it  "the  civic  spirit." 
When  it  is  manifest  at  the  edges  of  consciousness  of  a 
nation  we  call  it  "patriotism"  and  in  every  instance  it 
makes  people  do  that  which  for  themselves  and  of  them- 
selves they  would  not  do.  It,  therefore,  involves  possi- 
bilities, which  lie  beyond  the  edge  of  individual  necessity 
or  requirement. 

If,  now,  we  could  take  all  mankind  together  into  one 


160  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

giant  unit,  we  would  find  hovering  upon  the  "upper 
edge"  of  its  consciousness,  if  I  may  so  speak,  a  tremen- 
dous intelligent  force,  which  I  have  called  the  "human 
force"  and  sometimes  the  "Divine  human  force."  This 
force  has  an  intelligence  and  a  purpose  of  its  own,  dif- 
ferent from  that  of  any  one  or  of  several  of  its  consti- 
tuent parts,  and  lying  beyond  the  confines  or  borders 
of  the  immediate  and  distinctive  requirements  or  needs 
of  that  one  or  those  several.  The  Christian  theologian 
calls  this  actuality  "God,"  and  reasons  about  it  as  best 
he  can.  The  Hindu  calls  it  Nirvana,  or  the  "edge  of  the 
breathing  of  Om."  The  Scandinavian  Skald  called  it 
"Valhal,"  the  ultimate  "choice"  of  the  aggregate,  and  he 
called  the  things  which  carried  him  to  it,  usually  typified 
by  women,  "Valkueren,"  which  any  one  who  understands 
the  older  forms  of  the  Germanic  tongues  will  recognize 
as  "free  choice"  or  "free  will."  And  many  peoples  have 
called  it  by  many  names.  But  they  have  always  thought 
about  and  reasoned  about  and  philosophized  about  the 
same  thing,  namely,  about  the  ponderous,  massive,  gran- 
itic (Victor  Hugo  calls  it),  invisible  and  intangible  some- 
thing which  broods  over  humanity  and  with  a  Divine 
persistence  develops  its  ulterior  and  ultimate  purpose. 

Let  us  trace  the  dim  outline  of  this  purpose  as  it 
shadows  forth  from  the  steps  which  we  can  see  and  have 
seen  it  take.  But  before  we  do  so  let  me  presume  upon 
the  reader's  patience  once  again  to  recall  the  elementary 
and  fundamental  philosophy  of  force.  Every  force  is  in- 
visible. It  becomes  visible  only  through  its  effects.  Hold 
a  magnet  under  a  glass  plate  and  scatter  upon  the  plate 
a  handful  of  iron  filings  and  you  will  see  those  iron  filings 
more  or  less  rapidly  assume  a  certain  definite  form.  This 
form  is  the  form  of  the  otherwise  invisible  force.  Con- 
ceive of  humanity  as  a  mass  of  infinitely  small  atoms, 


RACE  DYNAMICS  161 

human  mites,  human  motes,  human  midgets,  and  see  them 
arranging  themselves  into  forms  of  social  life,  into  king- 
doms, into  empires,  into  republics ;  and  then  hold  in  mind 
the  assumption  from  which  the  writer  starts,  that  back  of 
them  as  back  of  the  iron  filings,  there  is  an  otherwise 
invisible  force,  which  is  moving  them  more  or  less  swiftly 
into  line  with  itself  and  its  form,  and  you  have  the  pic- 
ture which  is  in  the  mind  of  the  author.  While  he  real- 
izes that  in  points  it  may  militate  against  the  concept 
of  human  free  agency  which  some  of  his  students  may 
have  in  mind,  he  asks  their  indulgence  and  that,  for  pur- 
poses of  elaborating  the  general  thought,  it  be  granted 
for  the  time. 

Now  note  the  gradual  unfoldment  of  the  purpose  of 
this  invisible  "Humanity."  It  begins  in  the  lowest  strata 
of  life.  It  quietly  and  dispassionately  opens  out  the  first 
initiaments  of  a  grand  totality  of  purpose  by  cautious 
degrees  and  steps.  It  builds  a  mineral  kingdom,  and 
presently  impresses  upon  that  kingdom  the  desire  to  at- 
tain or  to  at  least  imitate  the  kingdom  immediately  above 
itself,  namely,  the  vegetable.  Its  constituent  minerals  ar- 
range themselves,  by  reason  of  some  hitherto  unintelligi- 
ble force,  into  crystals,  each  of  which  shall  come  as  close 
to  the  next  higher  kingdom,  as  feasible.  And  you  have  the 
beautiful  plant  forms  which  minerals  assume.  There  is 
the  delicate  tracery  of  frost  on  your  window  pane  and 
on  your  sidewalks;  the  beautiful  fronds  of  fern,  which 
the  crystallized  aqueous  vapors  of  the  atmosphere  pre- 
cipitate by  reason  of  frost  upon  any  cold  surface;  the 
daisy  which  a  snowflake  tries  to  build  of  itself;  the  ar- 
borescent forms  of  every  mineral  substance,  if  it  be  given 
an  opportunity  at  free  development. 

And  when  the  vegetable  kingdom  has  been  created  by 
means  of  that  mysterious  step  across  the  hiatus,  which 


162  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

separates  one  degree  of  creation  from  another,  which 
eludes  our  deepest  cunning  of  analysis  and  mocks  the 
mightiest  efforts  of  scientific  reason,  we  find  it  doing 
the  same  thing.  It  tries  to  produce  forms  which  shall 
be  as  nearly  animal  as  it  can  make  them.  It  will  try  to 
attain,  or,  at  least,  imitate  the  kingdom  immediately 
above  it,  that  is,  the  animal  kingdom.  It  will  produce 
a  sensitive  mimosa,  which  shrinks  from  the  touch  as 
would  a  delicately  organized  animal.  It  will  produce 
a  "Venus  Pitcher"  with  a  distinctly  organized  digestive 
system  like  an  animal.  It  will  produce  a  sponge,  that 
puzzle  of  the  naturalist,  which  does  not  itself  seem  to 
know  whether  to  conduct  itself  like  a  plant  or  like  an  ani- 
mal, and  therefore  does  both. 

And  when  the  vegetable  kingdom  has  been  established, 
the  animal  kingdom  grows  out  of  it  by  some  mysterious 
means.  Again  the  distinct  borderline  between  the  two  is 
overstepped  by  the  intelligence  back  of  it  all,  which  is 
aiming  at  a  definite  purpose,  and  which  is  taking  all 
these  steps  in  and  toward  the  attainment  of  that  purpose. 
And  immediately  the  animal  kingdom  does  the  same 
thing.  It,  too,  tries  to  imitate  the  higher  or  human 
kingdom.  It  produces  simian  forms  so  closely  resem- 
bling the  human  as  to  serve  as  a  serious  stumbling  block 
in  the  way  of  self-respect.  It  produces  traits  of  in- 
stinct and  of  palpable  reasoning  in  animals  which  are 
so  thoroughly  human  as  to  puzzle  the  very  elect.  Yet 
it  leaves  each  kingdom  intact,  and  the  cat  of  Bubastes  so 
evidently  knew  as  much  as  the  cat  of  to-day,  that  an- 
other line  of  rebus  is  added  to  the  enigma. 

The  human  family  produced,  the  upward  process 
seems  to  have  changed  its  method  from  a  series  of  dis- 
crete or  separate  degrees  to  the  elaboration  of  a  con- 
tinuous plane  of  life,  upon  which  a  new  series  of  dis- 


RACE  DYNAMICS  163 

crete  or  separate  degrees  were  established.  We  note  men 
beginning  the  socializing  process.  At  first  it  is  in  its 
crudest  and  most  animal  forms,  so  that  there  is  but  little 
difference  between  the  herd  and  the  tribe.  But  soon 
tokens  of  a  higher  intelligence  and  of  a  plan  of  that 
higher  intelligence  begin  to  appear.  The  nomad  turns 
sessile.  The  city  is  born.  The  city  assumes  a  definite 
attitude  toward  the  country.  It  and  its  overlord  estab- 
lish a  definite  relationship  on  abstract  lines  with  and 
toward  the  man  of  the  field.  Slavery,  serfdom  and  feu- 
dalism appear.  Militarism  is  born.  The  knights  pass 
in  solemn  procession  over  the  stage  and  carry  the  halo 
of  the  Grail  and  King  Arthur's  Round  Table  from  the 
edge  of  dreams  in  the  past  into  the  abyss  of  oblivion 
just  this  side  of  Walther  von  der  Vogelweide. 

And  back  of  it  all  is  this  tremendous  intelligence, 
shaping,  molding,  pushing,  urging,  realizing  its  pur- 
poseful designs  of  making  man  a  socialized  being. 
Watch  the  unseen  developing  human  society  from  the 
days  of  the  caveman  and  up  to  the  days  of  the  skyscra- 
per and  you  will  note  that  there  is  back  of  it  the  purpose 
of  socialization.  It  is  this  of  which  the  Socialist  dreams ; 
it  is  this  that  lies  at  the  bottom  of  the  efforts  of  the  com- 
munist ;  it  is  this  that  actuates  the  reformer,  whether  his 
name  be  Savonarola,  Bebel  or  Colby.  It  is  the  more  or 
less  acute  realization  of  the  fact  that  the  animal  lives  for 
itself  alone,  while  man  lives  for  society,  for  the  neighbor, 
for  the  aggregate,  and  his  humanity  depends  almost  en- 
tirely upon  his  attainment  of  this  mental  attitude  and 
its  fruition.  Step  by  step  the  purpose  unfolds.  Mili- 
tarism establishes  empires ;  they  are  toned  down  to  king- 
doms, to  constitutional  monarchies,  until  finally  the  evo- 
lutional forces  reach  the  republic — that  form  of  govern- 
ment which  seems  most  conducive  to  the  production  of 


164  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

those  forms  of  life  in  which  the  sociologic  factor  is  em- 
phasized on  both  sides  and  for  both  parties  of  a  trans- 
action; that  is,  in  which  group  can  work  for  and  serve 
group.  That  form  of  life  in  which  the  individual  can 
serve  the  individual  is  evidently  the  primitive  form ;  that 
in  which  the  group  can  serve  the  individual  is  the  next, 
being  the  form  of  feudalism,  of  militarism,  of  any  form 
of  autocracy  in  which  the  many  serve  the  one.  The  third 
step  is  evidently  that  in  which  the  individual  serves  the 
group,  which  is  that  form  where,  while  the  lineage  of 
blood  is  recognized,  the  person  selected  to  be  King  is 
more  or  less  of  a  figurehead,  behind  which  the  group  acts 
and  through  which  it  speaks.  This  is  the  form  of  the 
conditioned  or  modified  monarchy,  usually  called  consti- 
tutional monarchy. 

And  the  final  step,  the  only  step  left  to  be  taken,  as 
those  will  see  who  have  learned  the  possible  combination 
of  two  things,  is  that  of  the  relationship  of  group  to 
group,  the  step  which  the  human  force  is  now  taking, 
and  the  threshold  of  the  achievement  of  which  we  have 
just  fairly  crossed.  For  we  are  living  in  the  day  when 
group  serves  group.  Our  form  of  government  is  dis- 
tinctively that  of  a  group  of  persons  serving  another 
group.  The  President  is  evidently  only  one  of  a  group 
of  persons  representing  government.  We  select  quite  a 
large  body  of  men  and  call  it  Congress,  or  Senate  or 
Assembly,  or  City  Council,  or  Board  of  Freeholders,  or 

State Commission,  and  we  hand  over  to  their  care 

the  charge  of  certain  interests  of  the  larger  group  of  per- 
sons called  the  Nation,  the  State,  the  county,  the  city  or 
other  names.  We  gather  a  group  of  people  and  call  it 
the  postoffice  and  cause  it  to  serve  another  group  of  peo- 
ple and  call  that  the  Nation.  Another  group  of  persons 
gathers  and  is  termed  a  railroad  corporation  and  it 


RACE  DYNAMICS  165 

serves  a  certain  group  of  other  persons  scattered  over  a 
certain  fixed  and  defined  area,  large  or  small.  Another 
group  gathers  and  serves  yet  another  group  and  we 
have  the  trust,  or  the  corporation,  or  the  department 
store,  or  a  public  service  corporation,  or  an  apartment- 
house,  or  a  towel  supply  company,  or  a  hotel,  or  a  body 
of  window  cleaners. 

I  have  again  purposely  selected  a  few  groups  from  a 
great  many  and  from  as  varied  a  mass  as  possible  to 
show  the  thorough  way  in  which  the  body  public  is  per- 
meated by  these  groups  of  socialized  workers,  who  gath- 
er together  for  the  performance  of  a  certain  definite  use, 
a  social  service. 

If  now  we  go  back  over  the  ground,  and  note  that 
the  invisible  force  here  called  the  Human  Force  has  evi- 
dently been  steadfastly  at  work  evolving  a  definite  plan, 
and  that  the  final  accomplishment  of  that  evolution  in- 
volves the  form  of  social  service  with  which  we  are  now 
familiar,  we  are  prepared  to  take  additional  note  of  the 
various  incidental  factors,  which  enter  into  the  detailed 
construction  of  the  picture.  If  you  and  I  were  watch- 
ing the  construction  of  some  great  building,  and  our  at- 
tention were  confined  to  the  ground  upon  which  the 
building  is  to  stand,  we  would  find  that  progress  is  com- 
paratively slow.  A  lot  of  men  are  digging  and  delving 
and  making  huge  holes  in  the  ground,  and  blasting  and 
laying  tremendous  foundations.  The  work  is  apparently 
quite  slow,  and  to  the  unintelligent  mind,  rather  reckless 
and  not  at  all  pretty.  But  we  know,  while  this  is  going 
on,  that  there  are  a  number  of  large  concerns,  rolling 
mills,  smelters,  firms  of  architects,  folks  in  mines  and 
quarries,  men  in  the  lumber  camps  and  men  at  the  forge, 
busy  forming,  shaping,  casting,  smelting,  drawing  and 
doing  a  thousand  and  one  things,  each  independent  of 


166  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

the  other,  and  some  of  them  not  even  acquainted  with 
each  other.  Presently,  when  all  these  several  and  in- 
dependent kinds  of  work  have  been  going  on  for  some 
time,  each  in  itself  to  the  eye  of  the  casual  observer 
rather  purposeless,  somebody  who  has  the  matter  in 
hand  gathers  all  these  threads  together  and  they  begin 
more  or  less  rapidly  to  concentrate  upon  the  lot  of 
ground  which  we  have  been  watching,  and  where  men 
have  been  digging  apparently  useless  holes  and  laying 
ostensibly  uncalled  for  foundations.  Great  masses  of 
stone  marked  and  labeled  to  fit  into  a  certain  spot; 
massive  girders,  huge  iron  and  steel  things,  difficult  to 
describe,  begin  to  gather,  as  though  by  magic,  and  more 
quickly  than  any  one  would  think  who  is  not  familiar 
with  the  working  of  the  thing,  there  is  a  skyscraper 
towering  to  the  clouds  and  an  army  of  human  ants 
hurrying  into  it  in  the  morning  and  out  of  it  at  night. 

If  you  will  look  at  our  little  world  with  this  picture 
in  mind  you  will  find  a  series  of  apparently  independent 
groups  of  persons  called  nations,  working  upon  a  gen- 
eral form  of  control  called  government,  one  group  de- 
vising this,  another  that  form.  You  will  find  them  busy 
upon  a  series  of  groups  of  things  called  churches, 
schools,  hospitals,  institutions  and  other  names,  and  then 
what  happens?  Presently  the  hand  that  has  the  whole 
matter  in  charge  begins  to  concentrate  all  of  these  vari- 
ous efforts  into  one  giant  whole,  the  world  family  under 
the  shadow  of  whose  imminent  birth  we  are  standing. 
The  international  family,  of  which  we  in  America  have 
already  so  decided  a  foretaste,  stands  just  beyond  the 
threshold. 

And  while  we  are  approaching  more  or  less  rapidly 
this  culmination  of  the  Divine  Plan,  a  plan  of  salvation, 
because,  as  Henry  James  says,  "Society  is  the  redeemed 


RACE  DYNAMICS  167 

form  of  man,"  we  note  the  further  incidents,  which  aid 
in  this  apparently  marvelous  rapidity  of  growth.  The 
press,  the  discovery  of  steam,  the  vast  army  of  dis- 
coveries which  have  been  made  of  late,  all  coincide  with 
the  evolvement  of  this  larger  manhood.  They  were  un- 
known before  because  not  rationally  utilizable  hitherto. 
But  now  they  all  come  into  play  to  aid  the  spirit  of 
the  larger  altruism,  which  is  the  final  effort  of  Provi- 
dence toward  the  accomplishment  of  its  ultimate  pur- 
pose. 

And  we  have  form  after  form  of  socialized  life,  not 
only  the  two  old  and  original  forms,  the  church  and  the 
State,  but  also  the  more  definitely  altruistic  forms,  such 
as  the  school,  the  hospital,  the  factory,  the  huge  farm, 
the  corporation,  the  departmental  work,  in  which  special- 
ists handle  specific  forms  of  use  or  of  difficulty;  all  of 
these  indicate  that  the  growth  of  that  side  of  humanity, 
in  which  it  is  to  continue  to  exist  as  a  socialized  form  of 
life,  is  gradually  being  attained.  And  it  is  the  back- 
ground of  this  picture,  the  intelligent  force,  the  mind 
which  has  planned  it  all,  the  intelligence  which  has  never 
for  a  moment  lost  hold  upon  the  tiller  whereby  the  ship 
is  steered,  that  we  referred  to  in  previous  chapters,  when 
we  indicated  the  shadowy  outlines  of  the  thing  called 
"public  opinion,"  and  "public  sentiment"  and  the  other 
forces  which  mold  and  shape  human  destiny  both  as  to 
individuals  and  as  to  nations. 

And  the  few  symptoms  which  I  have  been  able  to 
gather  together  into  these  chapters  should  be  regarded 
as  what  they  are;  single  tones  in  the  vast  harmony 
called  "the  destiny  of  the  race,"  single  lines,  as  touches 
of  light  and  shade  on  the  canvas  painted  by  the  Divine 
Artist;  single  arches  and  naves  and  transepts  in  the 
Temple  of  Humanity,  built  by  the  Architect  of  Souls. 


PART  III 
ACTION  AND  PRACTICE 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

SOME   CIVIC   OBLIGATIONS   IN   RELATION   TO   THE   CITY  AND 
A    FEW    HINTS    FOR    VOTERS. 

IT  has  been  my  endeavor  to  set  before  the  reader 
and  the  student  of  these  chapters  the  general  struc- 
ture of  government  as  a  piece  of  mechanism,  and  to 
give  a  general  survey  of  the  human  force,  which  runs  it. 
This  third  section  is  designed  to  note  and  co-ordinate 
the  "functionings"  of  the  machine,  when  it  runs  prop- 
erly, with  reference  to  the  individual  citizen. 

This  ultimate  relationship  is,  of  course,  the  "practical 
citizenship"  to  be  set  forth,  and  when  the  subject  opens 
it  must  needs  open  with  the  reiteration  of  an  idea  pre- 
viously stated,  namely,  that  citizenship  does  not  consist 
of  voting  any  more  than  religion  consists  of  singing 
hymns.  The  casting  of  a  ballot,  while  an  important 
item,  is  nothing  but  an  incidental  function  in  citizen- 
ship, just  as  the  singing  of  a  hymn,  involving  as  it  does 
probable  attendance  upon  Sabbath  worship,  is  an  im- 
portant item ;  but  it  is  nothing  more  than  an  incident  in 
the  religious  life  and  experience  of  the  individual. 

Membership  with  the  church  universal,  or,  as  it  is 
symbolically  called,  citizenship  in  the  city  of  God,  in- 
volves prayer,  the  singing  of  hymns  and  the  attendance 

169 


170  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

upon  services,  but  religion  also  involves  menial  atti- 
tudes ;  it  involves  obligations  toward  the  neighbor ;  it  in- 
volves charity  toward  him;  it  involves  service  rendered 
him,  which  is  service  rendered  to  God,  as  distinct  from 
emotional  or  intellectual  worship,  for  "what  ye  have  done 
to  the  least  of  these,  ye  have  done  to  me,"  said  one  who 
knew  Him  best  of  all.  Religion  involves  active  service 
toward  the  helpless;  it  involves  respect  for  the  "other 
man's"  opinion;  it  involves  numberless  obligations, 
which,  together  with  the  external  observances  of  worship 
and  the  Sabbath,  constitute  "citizenship"  with  the 
church. 

Membership  with  the  State,  or  natural  citizenship, 
while  it  includes  the  intelligent  casting  of  a  vote,  in- 
volves also  as  many  obligations  as  does  membership  with 
the  church,  or  spiritual  citizenship. 

And  in  order  to  place  these  obligations  as  clearly  as 
possible  before  the  reader,  it  is  best  to  begin  with  that 
relationship  which  comes  nearest  home,  namely,  the  re- 
lation of  the  citizen  to  the  city. 

At  first,  the  citizen  is  inclined  to  feel  that  when  he  has 
elected  a  number  of  men  and  called  them  the  "city  au- 
thorities" he  has  done  all  that  is  required  of  him.  But 
that  idea,  together  with  that  title,  both  belong  to  old 
lines  of  thought  that  are  not  feasible  or  practicable  for 
modern  cities  and  the  work  involved  in  them.  For  to 
segregate  the  men  elected  to  office  and  demand  that  they 
should  "run"  a  town  is  absurd. 

Take  an  illustration :  Suppose  a  body  of  citizens  has 
elected  some  one  to  "keep  the  streets  clean,"  and  that 
then  that  body  of  citizens  does  everything  in  its  power 
to  litter  them  up — throws  papers,  and  boxes,  and  ashes, 
and  everything  else  out  into  the  streets.  Is  that  a  think- 
able relationship?  Of  course  not.  The  first  thing  any 


ACTION    AND    PRACTICE  171 

sensible  man  does,  who  is  selected  (or  elected)  to  keep 
the  streets  clean  is  to  ask  the  citizen  to  keep  them  clean. 
He  gives  him  directions  as  to  ashes  and  garbage ;  he  puts 
up  boxes  into  which  the  citizen  can  throw  his  newspaper 
and  his  banana  peels,  and  he  specifies  certain  places,  such 
as  depot  platforms  and  corridors  of  large  buildings,  etc., 
where  he  tells  him  not  to  expectorate. 

Virtually,  it  is  not  the  official  that  keeps  the  streets 
clean ;  it  is  the  citizen,  and  if  the  citizen  does  not  realize 
fully  that  keeping  streets  clean  is  as  much  a  part  of 
citizenship  as  voting,  he  may  elect  officials  by  the  dozen 
or  score,  and  his  streets  will  not  be  clean.  The  "white 
wing"  and  the  scavenger  are  only  "aids"  to  the  citizen. 
But  on  the  original  sense  of  obligation  toward  the  clean- 
liness of  streets  as  an  obligation  of  citizenship  depends 
the  ultimate  cleanliness  or  defilement  of  the  streets. 

That  an  extension  of  this  thought  into  other  lines  of 
municipal  activity  constitutes  "practical  citizenship,"  so 
far  as  the  city  is  concerned,  is  evident.  And  in  doing 
this  three  lines  of  possible  relationship  suggest  them- 
selves almost  instantly.  One  is  that  the  obligations  of 
citizenship,  as  to  the  various  departments  of  the  mu- 
nicipality, are  best  met  by  the  citizen  being  well  in- 
formed; the  other  by  the  citizen  being  active  in  civic 
work,  and  the  third  by  the  citizen  being  willing  to  as- 
sume public  office  at  any  time,  whenever,  in  his  estima- 
tion, the  requirement  points  directly  to  him  and  he  is  com- 
petent to  fill  the  office  and  to  perform  its  functions. 

Let  us  summarize  these  three  possibilities: 

1.  To  be  well  informed.  With  many  minds  informa- 
tion is  a  matter  of  mass;  with  others  it  is  a  matter  of 
order.  One  man  thinks  he  knows  a  thing,  if  he  knows 
a  lot  about  it;  another  thinks  he  knows  a  thing,  when 
the  information  he  has  concerning  it  is  so  ordered  in  his 


172  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

mind  as  to  be  available  at  a  moment's  notice,  a  condi- 
tion usually  described  in  popular  parlance  as  "having 
such  a  thing  at  your  fingers'  ends."  Whatever  the  habit 
of  individual  minds  may  be,  "practical  citizenship"  means 
to  be  well  informed,  and  if  that  information  can  be  held 
in  mind  in  a  definite  and  a  systematic  way  it  is  improved 
by  such  holding.  The  citizen  would,  therefore,  inform 
himself  as  to  the  assets  of  his  city,  as  to  the  facilities  of 
his  city,  as  to  the  functions  of  his  city.  In  any  case,  it 
will  be  his  city.  He  will  never  permit  himself  to  say : 

"They  are  going  to  do  so  and  so."  He  will  always 
say  (and  think)  "We  are  going  to  do  so  and  so."  It  is 
his  city,  not  some  one's  else.  And  whatever  is  being 
done,  good,  bad  or  indifferent  though  it  be,  he  is  doing 
it.  Before  this  sense  of  aggregate  co-partnership  arises 
in  a  man's  mind,  he  is  only  a  fractional  citizen.  He 
boards  and  lodges  in  a  town.  It  is  not  his  city.  This 
point  in  business  is  well  known.  The  man  who  says 
about  his  business,  about  his  firm,  about  the  house,  that 
"They  have  decided  to  charge  $3.50  for  this  thing,"  can 
perform  only  one  service  for  that  business  and  that  is  to 
hand  in  his  resignation.  Only  the  man  who  says  "We 
find  that  we  will  have  to  charge  $3.50  for  this,"  whether 
he  be  manager,  salesman  or  office  boy,  has  a  right  to 
think  of  himself  as  part  of  that  particular  business,  and 
the  business  concern  that  is  constituted  of  men  who  say 
"we,"  from  the  president  of  the  board  of  directors  down 
to  the  janitor,  is  a  success  from  the  outset.  Whenever  a 
body  of  men  find  it  necessary,  for  any  reason  whatever, 
to  speak  of  each  other  as  "they,"  that  body  of  men  is 
approaching  the  end  of  its  aggregate  existence.  And  it 
will  topple  over  with  a  crash  proportionate  to  its  size. 
So  the  citizen  who  says  "they"  is  thereby  virtually  ex- 
cluding himself  from  citizenship. 


ACTION    AND    PRACTICE  173 

And  of  this  city,  which  is  his  city,  par  excellence,  he 
should  know  the  assets.  He  should  know  what  about  the 
city  stands  for  wealth,  and  what  part  of  the  things  so 
standing  represents  productive  wealth  and  what  part 
represents  simply  available  asset.  The  productive  asset, 
(which  socio-economically  is  virtually  "capital")  in- 
cludes the  city  streets,  its  water  front,  its  wharfage,  its 
markets,  its  privileges,  usually  given  in  the  form  of 
license  for  this,  that  or  the  other  venture.  The  other 
form  of  asset  (socio-economically  described  as  "wealth") 
includes  the  public  buildings,  the  school  buildings,  the 
housing  of  his  light  and  water  plants,  the  parks  and 
playgrounds,  and  similar  values. 

His  relation  to  these  is  one  of  general  interest,  both  as 
to  the  condition  and  the  disposition  of  them.  He  need 
not  concern  himself  necessarily  with  the  amounts  of 
money  these  things  stand  for,  or  the  kind  of  sinking 
fund  and  bonding  arrangements  made  for  them,  un- 
less he  be  a  financier;  then  his  city  has  the  claim  upon 
him,  that  he  should  go  carefully  over  the  reports  of 
the  city  and  note  whether  the  most  advantageous  terms 
are  made  by  the  city  officials,  and  whether  any  improved 
method  of  doing  things,  has  been  more  recently  devised 
and  whether  it  be  applicable  in  the  kind  of  city  he  in- 
habits, and  with  the  number  of  inhabitants  it  contains 
or  taxable  values  it  represents.  Otherwise  his  interest 
is  general,  and  one  of  the  essential  features  of  the  prac- 
tical working  out  of  that  interest  will  be  mentioned  in  a 
moment. 

Next  he  should  be  fairly  informed  as  to  the  facilities 
of  his  city.  Whether  it  has  or  should  have  its  own  water, 
light  and  sewage  plant ;  whether  it  has  or  should  have  a 
garbage  incinerator ;  what  happens  to  things  when  they 
go  out  of  his  sight  or  out  of  his  hands;  what  the  na- 


174  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

ture  of  the  school  buildings,  of  the  market  halls,  the 
playgrounds  is,  and  how  they  are  located,  and  where. 

And  finally  he  should  give  himself  time  to  know  a 
little  something  about  the  police,  the  fire  department  and 
the  civil  offices  of  his  city.  He  should  be  informed  as  to 
the  ordinances  which  are  before  his  city  council;  as  to 
the  resources  from  which  his  police  force  derives  its  sala- 
ries ;  whether  those  sources  be  the  wisest,  whether  they  be 
at  all  proper  or  improper;  whether  the  fire  service  be 
efficient,  and  if  not,  how  its  efficiency  can  be  improved. 

All  this  looks  exceedingly  complex.  But  it  is,  in 
reality,  the  simplest  thing  in  the  world.  It  means  simply 
a  general  interest,  and  that  interest  is  usually  adjusted 
by  the  fact  of  notification  of  departments.  If,  for  in- 
stance, the  automobilist  finds  a  particularly  serious  con- 
dition of  affairs  in  the  roadway  within  city  limits — some 
spot  where  the  plumber  did  not  properly  replace  the 
roadbed  when  he  introduced  water  into  a  house,  or  where 
the  contractor  permitted  his  men  to  be  negligent  in 
the  reconstruction  of  that  roadway — a  'phone  call  to  the 
street  department,  or  a  letter,  will  very  frequently  reme- 
dy the  matter.  A  serious  break  in  the  sidewalk;  some 
particularly  offensive  poster;  a  palpably  professional 
beggar  at  the  front  or  back  door  with  the  usual  "iron- 
holder"  obligato;  red  lamps  neglected  on  some  obstruc- 
tion of  the  roadway  or  sidewalk  at  night.  A  moment  at 
the  'phone  will  suffice  to  call  up  the  police  department 
and  to  give  the  location  of  the  thing  complained  of;  or 
a  'phone  message  may  be  sent  to  the  Bureau  of  Chari- 
ties as  to  the  beggar.  A  thousand  and  one  opportunities 
for  "practical  citizenship"  might  be  thus  catalogued. 
But  these  will  suffice  to  indicate  how  to  make  the  town 
you  live  in  a  cleaner,  a  better  and  a  healthier  town,  and 
to  secure  for  it  the  results  which  naturally  follow  this 


ACTION    AND    PRACTICE  175 

policy — appreciation  of  realty,  better  conditions  and 
surroundings  for  the  citizen  and  his  children,  and  the 
comfort  of  a  reasonably  conducted  municipality. 

2. — But  concerted  action  is  better  than  individual 
action ;  hence  the  further  obligation  of  the  practical  citi- 
zen as  to  civic  organizations  in  his  city.  Here  matters 
are  discussed  by  several  or  by  many,  and  the  collective 
wisdom  of  many  in  conference  gathered  will  elicit  knowl- 
edge which  to  the  individual  is  inaccessible  or  unsecura- 
ble.  From  such  organizations  as  centres  he  can  also  be 
helpful  to  those  upon  whose  shoulders  the  burden  of  the 
city's  work  rests  directly.  He  can  bring  to  bear  upon 
the  city's  problems  the  wisdom  gained  by  other  munici- 
palities, by  asking  men  from  those  municipalities  to 
come  to  address  his  club ;  to  tell  him  how,  in  that  city,  the 
commission  was  substituted  for  our  ridiculous  ward  sys- 
tem of  political  machinery,  and  how  it  works ;  how  that 
city  went  about  it,  to  avoid  borrowing  money  in  antici- 
pation of  taxes ;  how  it  managed  to  make  its  public  bath 
a  self-supporting,  aye,  a  paying  institution;  and  other 
slices  of  Utopia,  which  he  might  otherwise  never  have 
brought  to  his  attention.  Through  such  organization 
he  can  also  question  candidates,  and  pledge  them,  what- 
ever they  may  choose  to  call  themselves  politically,  to  a 
certain  policy  in  the  conduct  of  public  affairs.  Again 
a  thousand  and  one  things  could  be  catalogued  as  being 
brought  within  the  pale  of  practical  citizenship  so  far 
as  the  municipality  is  concerned  through  the  civic  or- 
ganization. 

3. — And  finally,  practical  citizenship  requires  of  the 
man  who  has  been  chosen  to  fill  an  office,  serious  appli- 
cation to  the  requirements  of  that  office.  The  most  hope- 
less confusion  and  discreditable  repute  have  been  brought 
upon  cities,  because  the  incumbents  of  office  did  not  take 


176  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

that  office  seriously.  They  looked  up  the  stubs  of  the 
books  of  their  predecessor,  and  they  imitated  him.  They 
gave  no  original  thought  to  the  routine  of  the  thing. 
They  did  not  do  in  municipal  business  what  they  did 
and  had  to  do  in  their  private  business.  Any  kind  of 
primitive  bookkeeping  would  do  for  the  city;  any  kind 
of  concrete  would  do  for  its  contracts;  any  kind  of 
feed  would  do  for  its  horses ;  any  kind  of  lumber  would 
do  for  its  public  buildings. 

Public  business  and  private  business  differ  not  at  all. 
A  city  is  a  large  firm,  whereof  all  citizens  are  partners, 
paying  in  their  quota  in  taxes  and  drawing  out  their 
profits  in  the  shape  of  streets,  light,  water,  schools,  po- 
lice protection,  fire  protection  and  so  forth,  and  the  busi- 
ness of  such  a  concern,  with  a  thousand  partners  can 
be  as  efficiently  and  as  methodically  conducted  as  can 
that  of  a  concern  with  three  partners  or  with  ten.  Any 
defection  on  the  part  of  those  entrusted  with  the  busi- 
ness of  the  municipality  and  any  neglect  to  use  the  very 
best  business  methods  re-acts  upon  the  city  and  upon  the 
tax  list,  and  upon  the  class  of  inhabitants  which  that 
city  will  attract. 

And  practical  citizenship  for  the  man  elected  means 
thorough  familiarity  with  the  department  entrusted  to 
him  by  his  fellow  citizens  and  as  discriminating  a  ser- 
vice for  that  department  as  though  it  were  his  own  busi- 
ness. And  that  virtually  it  is.  For  if  the  city  be  his  city 
(and  citizenship  absolutely  rests  upon  that  assumption) 
then  is  the  city's  business  actually  his  business  and  it 
should  be  so  conducted. 


CHURCH    AND    STATE  177 


CHAPTER  XIX 

THE    CITIZEN    AND   THE    CHURCH   AND    THE    DUTY   OF   THE 
FORMER  TO  STUDY  THE  QUESTION. 

AS  we  approach  the  obligations  of  practical  citi- 
zenship toward  the  church  we  grow  instantly 
aware  of  the  extreme  complexity  of  the  sub- 
ject. None  is  more  so,  especially  in  America. 

In  many  other  countries,  custom,  the  habit  of  think- 
ing of  the  relations  of  Church  and  State  as  being  au- 
thoritatively fixed,  the  presence  and  continuous  exist- 
ence of  a  State  church  and  other  facilities,  make  the 
problem  less  perplexed. 

But  in  America  we  have  no  precedent  of  ages;  we 
have  no  State  church;  we  have  no  authoritatively  fixed 
conditions,  even  in  the  Roman  Catholic  churches  and 
among  the  Jews,  such  as  exist  in  other  countries.  For 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  America  distinctly  dif- 
fers from  the  same  denomination  in  other  countries,  and 
a  congregation  like  the  Jews,  which  in  all  other  coun- 
tries must  needs  live  up  to  certain  profoundly  inscribed, 
because  inherited,  mandates,  and  under  irritating  re- 
strictions imposed  by  the  policies  of  State,  is  here  as 
utterly  free  as  if  it  were  newly  born,  and  therefore  in 
this  country  develops  along  lines  that  would  prove 
sources  of  amazement  in  any  other  land. 

Whether  this  condition  of  things  is  best  for  each  of 
the  churches  concerned ;  whether  the  old  Puritan  Fathers 
were  or  were  not  right  in  their  effort  at  unanimity  and 
uniformity  in  ecclesiastical  matters,  when  they  laid  the 


178  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

foundations  of  our  religious  life,  no  longer  matters.  We 
are  faced  by  an  absolutely  complex  and  apparently  ir- 
rational proposition.  And  the  sincere  citizen,  who  claims 
fairness  for  himself  and  for  his  neighbor,  and  who  real- 
izes that  religious  liberty  is  inscribed  in  the  very  heart 
of  our  Constitution  and  of  our  institutions,  is  at  times 
sorely  puzzled  by  movements  which  arise,  some  of  them 
large  and  some  small,  which  infringe  upon  the  borders 
of  civic  rights  and  wrongs  and  overstep  them. 

These  movements  come  to  the  citizen  in  the  efforts  of 
"religious  fanatics,"  as  they  are  called,  and  largely 
through  the  question  of  marriage.  He  may  be  unfa- 
miliar with  the  fact  that  the  psychic  centres  of  theologic 
thought  in  the  brain  lie  close  upon  the  fringe  of  the 
psychic  centres  of  sex  life,  and  that  hence  many  forms 
of  so-called  religious  unbalancement  are  intimately  as- 
sociated with  irregularities  in  the  conception  of  the  rela- 
tions of  men  and  women;  but  he  cannot  avoid  noting 
the  fact  that  from  Teed  to  Dowie  there  is  a  line  of  single 
theologic  movements,  involving  bizarre  methods  of  rea- 
soning, and  attaching  to  that  method  certain  tenets  in 
reference  to  marriage  with  which  he  does  not  coincide, 
either  individually  or  as  a  member  of  the  nation.  And 
at  no  point  is  this  matter  borne  in  upon  him  so  strongly 
as  a  citizen  and  as  a  form  of  civic  obligation  as  when  it 
assumes  the  proportions  which  it  did  in  Mormonism. 

Beginning  in  a  theologically  disturbed  brain,  the  two 
centres  worked  by  induction,  as  they  always  do;  using 
the  word  "induction"  as  it  is  used  in  electricity.  The 
suggestion,  however,  seemed  to  fall  in  that  instance  into 
less  sterile  ground  than  is  usually  the  case.  The  infec- 
tion spread  until  we  have  the  difficulty  presented  by  the 
polygamy  practised  by  the  Mormons  in  the  early  six- 
ties and  in  the  popular  mind  accepted  as  still  flourishing, 


CHURCH    AND    STATE  179 

though  to  the  judicial  mind  that  does  not  seem  to  be  the 
case.  Here  we  have  an  enlarged  and  acute  form  of  the 
difficulty  of  deciding  where  the  lines  of  the  church  end 
and  where  the  lines  of  the  State  begin. 

In  fact,  this  opens  out  the  consideration  of  a  variety 
of  fundamental  principles,  because  it  demands  of  the 
citizen  certain  kinds  of  concrete  action.  He  is  asked, 
for  instance,  to  help  unseat  a  Senator;  to  prevent  the 
election  of  another;  to  assume  certain  definite  attitudes 
upon  the  question  of  marriage  and  accordingly  upon  the 
question  of  divorce,  and  other  relationships,  presented 
to  him  locally  by  the  policy  of  the  police  in  reference  to 
the  disorderly  house  and  the  keepers  and  frequenters  of 
such  houses.  All  these  are  questions  of  practical  citi- 
zenship and  the  mind  should  assume  its  attitudes  definite- 
ly and  squarely;  otherwise  hesitation  and  uncertainty 
may  in  an  acute  crisis  deprive  citizenship  of  its  values.  It 
is  not  the  purpose  of  this  chapter  to  prescribe  definite  at- 
titudes. It  proposes  to  call  for  definite  thought  in  the 
matter  and  lay  the  broad  foundations  for  such  thought. 

Primarily  then,  the  citizen  of  the  State  is  faced  by  his 
citizenship  (or  membership)  in  the  Church.  If  he  be  a 
Catholic,  his  church  will  tell  him  distinctly  what  he  is  to 
think  upon  the  question  of  marriage  or  divorce.  If  he 
be  a  member  of  certain  Protestant  denominations,  they 
will  take  exactly  the  same  attitude  as  that  of  the  Roman 
Church.  If  of  others,  that  attitude  will  differ  and  he 
will,  instead  of  stringency  in  the  matter  of  divorce,  be 
asked  to  assume  an  attitude  of  leniency,  with  such  modi- 
fications as  to  the  marriage  of  divorced  persons  as  seem 
to  suggest  themselves  from  his  consideration  of  his 
church  laws  and  his  State  laws. 

In  either  case  there  is  a  conflict  of  citizenship.  His 
manner  of  looking  at  marriage  will  be  different  when  he 


180  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

regards  himself  as  a  citizen  of  the  church  from  that 
which  he  must  needs  assume  if  he  regards  himself  pri- 
marily as  a  citizen  of  the  State,  as  would  those  whose 
church  affiliations  are  relaxed,  broad,  liberal  or  nil,  as 
the  case  may  be.  And  so  he  must  needs  turn  somewhere 
for  instance,  to  help  unseat  a  senator;  to  prevent  the 
will  be  of  little  avail,  if  it  be  not  based  upon  some  definite 
theory  of  churchmanship  and  of  statesmanship.  And  it 
is  here  that  the  vagueness  of  the  matter  has  its  inception. 
If  marriage  be  considered  a  church  rite,  then  it  must  be 
regarded  in  a  way  differing  from  that  which  will  arise 
if  it  be  considered  a  State  function  or  a  civil  contract. 
For  if  marriage  be  a  question  of  the  church,  then  it 
grows  into  a  religious  question,  and  men  on  religious 
grounds  must  be  permitted  to  think  and  act  in  reference 
to  the  marriage  question  as  their  conscience  dictates. 
That  means  that  the  American  citizen  can,  for  instance, 
prescribe  no  laws  to  Utah,  as  to  the  unity  or  plurality 
of  wives.  But  that  has  already  been  done.  Hence  the 
Federal  Government  has  wittingly  or  unwittingly  as- 
sumed the  same  attitude  toward  marriage  which  has 
been  assumed  by  the  older  countries,  and  that  is  that  it  is 
primarily  a  civil  contract  with  which  the  church  is  con- 
cerned only  incidentally. 

If  this  be  the  decision  of  the  Federal  Government,  in 
what  relation  can  the  Catholic  Church  stand  to  that  de- 
cision ?  For  that  body  assumes,  and  under  the  Constitu- 
tion has  a  perfect  right  to  assume,  that  marriage  is  a 
religious  ceremony,  a  sacrament  of  the  church,  and  as 
such  entirely  beyond  the  range  of  the  functions  and  ob- 
ligations of  the  State.  The  reader  will  see  that  he  is 
here  facing  a  fundamental  difference  of  viewpoint,  and 
that  will  immediately  clear  up  his  first  obligation  of  prac- 
tical citizenship. 


CHURCH    AND    STATE  181 

This  first  obligation  is  to  make  himself  thoroughly  fa- 
miliar with  the  question  of  marriage  and  divorce;  with 
what  has  been  done  in  line  with  that  question  by  the 
Federal  Government;  by  the  various  States;  with  what 
the  women  have  done,  are  doing  and  propose  to  do ;  for 
this  question  should  certainly  be  considered  a  "woman 
question"  more  than  any  other.  He  should  become  fa- 
miliar with  the  various  incidental  questions  connected 
with  the  larger  proposition ;  the  question  of  the  property 
rights  of  single  women,  of  married  women  and  of  widows ; 
the  question  of  legitimacy  of  birth  and  what  it  involves. 
In  other  words,  practical  citizenship  in  this  case  involves 
co-operation  with  every  force  and  with  every  movement 
which  is  trying  to  settle  so  vexed  a  problem. 

And  it  may  assist  him  fundamentally  to  hold  in  mind 
the  theory  upon  which  other  countries  base  their  claim 
that  marriage,  in  Christian  countries,  is  a  civil  contract. 
That  claim  is  based  upon  the  fact,  that  in  the  gospel 
story,  the  founder  of  Christianity  distinctly  establishes 
two  sacraments,  namely,  Baptism  and  the  Holy  Supper. 
For  these,  formulas  are  given,  indications  are  furnished. 
Any  other  function  of  the  church  or  State  is  a  matter 
of  deduction.  Hence  the  conclusions  of  older  govern- 
ments based  upon  the  establishment  by  the  Founder  of 
the  Christian  Church  of  only  two  sacraments,  are  that 
marriage,  birth,  death  and  other  questions  now  custo- 
marily thought  of  as  functionings  of  the  church,  are  es- 
sentially functionings  of  the  State.  This  thought  is 
worthy  of  much  consideration  and  conclusions  from  it 
should  largely  influence  the  attitude  of  the  citizen  upon 
the  questions  at  issue. 

On  somewhat  similar  grounds  would  be  placed  the  con- 
sideration of  the  question  of  education,  as  presented  in 
its  three  most  familiar  phases,  namely,  the  parochial 


182  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

school,  or  church  school,  not  necessarily  confined  to  the 
Catholic  Church,  though  most  largely  present  with  and 
through  that  church;  the  question  of  the  theological 
bias  given  a  college  or  university,  and  finally  the  ques- 
tion of  the  introduction  of  any  form  of  religious  instruc- 
tion into  the  public  school,  involving  even  the  simple 
reading  of  the  Bible,  or  the  use  of  the  "Lord's  Prayer." 
That  these  are  matters  of  practical  citizenship  with  ref- 
erence to  the  church  is  evident,  and  that  they  may  de- 
scend sufficiently  far  into  the  limits  of  the  practical  as 
to  occasionally  influence  the  vote  on  the  Board  of  Edu- 
cation in  any  city,  needs  but  reference  to  incidents 
which  have  recently  happened  in  some  of  our  larger 
Western  cities. 

The  school,  together  with  other  similar  involvements, 
instantly  projects  the  question  of  taxation  into  the  fore- 
ground, and  the  issue  is  raised :  "Shall  a  school  founded 
by  a  religious  institution  or  denomination  be  taxed?  Is  it 
sufficiently  close  in  its  alliance  with  our  public  school 
system,  to  be  free  or  exempt?  And  if  a  school  as  church 
property  may  be  taxed,  why  should  not  other  church 
property  be  taxed,  especially  property  whose  use  can- 
not be  traced  as  being  distinctively  ecclesiastic,  for  in- 
stance— a  cemetery,  a  book  room  handling  general  pub- 
lications, an  office  building,  of  which  only  sections  are 
used  for  actual  "church"  purposes,  while  others  are 
rented  out  to  individuals  or  corporations  as  profit  pro- 
ducers ?"  In  fact,  it  opens  the  general  question  of  church 
taxation. 

There  is  no  need  citing  further  instances,  though 
many  there  be,  that  could  be  so  cited.  Suffice  it  to  say 
that  practical  citizenship  involves  the  careful  considera- 
tion of  fundamental  principles,  and  the  best  answer  that 
can  be  given  to  the  questions:  "Where  ends  the  jurisdic- 


CHURCH    AND    STATE  183 

tion  of  the  church,  and  where  that  of  the  State?  And  in 
cases  where  the  boundary  line  is  dim  and  not  clearly  de- 
finable, where  should  the  church  give  way  and  where  the 
State?" 

In  the  settlement  of  these  questions  it  may  be  helpful 
to  call  to  mind  and  to  keep  in  mind  the  following  tenta- 
tive definitions  of  church  and  State,  in  their  coherent  se- 
quence. The  church  may  be: 

One — A  building. 

Two — A  group  of  men  and  women  worshipping  in  a 
building,  as  "The  First  Church." 

Three — A  series  of  groups  of  believers,  admitting  the 
same  creed  and  guided  by  the  same  discipline,  as  "The 
Methodist  Church." 

Four — A  larger  group  of  persons  following  one  teach- 
er, but  comprising  many  different  expressions  of  theo- 
logic  opinion,  as  the  "Christian  Church,"  comprising  the 
Roman  Catholic,  the  Greek  Catholic  and  many,  many 
sects,  large  and  small,  of  Protestants,  with  a  few  smaller 
groups  of  the  so-called  "heterodox." 

Five — An  abstract  attitude  of  mind,  prescribing  that 
a  man,  no  matter  what  his  religious  denomination,  shall 
"do  as  best  he  knows  how,"  which  activity  makes  him  a 
member  of  the  "Church  Universal." 

Six — The  attitude  of  one  mind  toward  another.  The 
relation  of  men  to  men  as  mental  beings. 

Seven — The  relation  of  the  soul  to  its  Maker. 

These  last  two  definitions  are  derived  from  philosophy, 
and  are  usually  involved  in  instruction  conveyed  by  our 
deepest  thinkers. 

The  State  may  be: 

One — A  bit  of  geography. 

Two — The  people  living  on  that  bit  of  geography. 
(If,  for  instance,  I  say:  "The  State  of  New  Jersey  pro- 


184  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

duces  no  coal,  and  no  iron  to  speak  of,"  I  mean  the  State 
of  New  Jersey  as  a  bit  of  geography.  When  I  say  "The 
State  of  New  Jersey  is  the  mother  of  trusts"  I  mean  that 
the  people  of  the  State  have  followed  a  policy,  through 
their  lawmakers,  which  needs  revision. ) 

Three — The  body  of  habits,  customs  and  incidents 
called  "laws  of  the  State,"  as  in  the  sentence,  "Be  it  en- 
acted by  the  State  of  New  Jersey,"  if  ever  it  should  be 
adopted. 

Four — The  commercial,  financial  and  public  interests 
of  the  State,  virtually  the  "body  politic,"  based  upon  its 
railroads,  its  telegraphs,  its  shipping  facilities  and  so 
forth. 

Five — The  relation  of  a  series  of  groups  of  men  as  to 
their  property  rights,  therefore  as  physical  beings  in- 
volving health,  comfort,  policing,  fire  protection  and 
other  functions.  These  are  the  State  in  its  philosophic 
sense. 

Hence  we  make  the  philosophic  deduction,  which  may 
prove  useful  in  any  ultimate  conclusion  to  be  formed 
along  the  lines  here  indicated,  that  the  church  is  the  re- 
lation of  men  to  men  as  to  mentality,  as  to  mental  rights 
and  privileges,  while  the  State  is  the  relation  of  men  to 
men  as  to  their  physical  rights  and  privileges. 

Any  question  involving  abstract  mentality,  as  such,  is 
a  church  question.  Any  question  in  any  way  bordering 
upon  the  physical  and  involving  physical  things  is  a 
State  question,  sometimes  involving  the  co-operation  of 
the  church,  sometimes  setting  it  aside. 


THE    SCHOOL  185 


CHAPTER  XX 

SEVEN    FEATURES    THAT    HELP    IN    MAKING    THE    PUBLIC 

SCHOOLS  A  SUCCESS VALUE  OF  PARENTS* 

ASSOCIATIONS. 

NO  one  for  a  moment  doubts  that  the  school  is 
the  basic  structure  of  modern  civilized  society. 
As  fares  the  school,  so  fares  the  nation.  An  er- 
ror made  in  school  is  more  difficult  of  eradication  than  an 
error  made  in  any  other  portion  of  the  administration  of 
governmental  machinery. 

Neither  does  any  one  doubt  that  America  has  an  ad- 
mirable school  system.  We  actually  train  into  the  minds 
of  pupils  more  of  citizenship  than  can  be  done  by  the 
school  system  of  any  other  country.  There  may  not  be 
about  our  system  the  regularity,  the  clockwork,  the 
thorough  empiric  training  that  marks  the  system  of  edu- 
cation in  other  countries,  but  we  certainly  have  about  our 
system  the  elements  that  make  for  manhood  in  the  most 
marked  degree.  These  elements,  assisted  by  certain  fea- 
tures are  what  make  our  schools  the  success  they  are. 

I  need  dwell  upon  these  features  only  briefly,  since  they 
are  known  to  my  readers.  They  are  seven  in  number.  In 
the  first  place,  so  far  as  legislative  aspects  are  concerned, 
it  may  be  safely  assumed  that  the  school  law,  as  such,  is 
least  influenced  by  politics.  While  politics  plays  a  part 
— and  an  undesirable  part — in  the  general  adjustment 
of  school  matters  in  city,  town  and  village,  it  plays  none 
in  the  enactment  of  the  law,  or  virtually  none.  Very  rare- 
ly do  our  teachers,  our  principals  or  our  superintendents 


186  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

seek  to  influence  legislation  in  any  way.  Nor  is  a  State 
Board  of  Education  sufficient  of  an  inducement  in  the 
way  of  emolument  or  possibilities  of  advancement  to  al- 
lure the  self-seeking  politician.  Hence  the  school  law  of 
a  State  is  apt  to  be  about  as  good  a  law  as  the  intelligence 
of  the  people  at  large  through  their  lawmakers  and  the 
exigencies  and  circumstances  of  the  case  will  produce. 
This  is  the  first  point  favorable  to  our  schools. 

The  second  point  is  the  efficiency  of  our  teachers. 
There  can  be  little  doubt  as  to  that.  Though  there  may 
be  here  and  there  a  case  where  an  incompetent  person  se- 
cures a  position  in  a  school,  that  case  is  so  rare  as  to  serve 
as  an  incidental  exception  that  merely  goes  to  prove  the 
rule.  Those  of  us  who  have  had  reason  to  watch  the 
work  of  the  schools  most  closely  are  struck  at  once  and 
permanently  impressed  with  the  devotion  of  the  teachers 
and  workers  to  their  work  and  the  universality  of  that 
devotion. 

The  next  points  favorable  to  our  schools  are  the  in- 
troduction into  its  course  of  studies  and  work  of  one  or 
the  other  form  of  manual  training,  alongside  of  which 
may  be  placed  the  laboratory  and  workshop,  which  nat- 
urally grow  out  of  manual  training,  and  the  practical 
side  of  education  as  shown  in  business  and  household 
training  in  such  forms  as  are  familiar  to  those  who  have 
looked  into  school  matters,  especially  in  our  large  cities. 
These  familiar  items,  which  cover  the  three  of  the  seven 
points  here  to  be  enumerated,  need  no  further  elaboration. 

The  sixth  point  is  the  excellent  care  which  the  school 
takes  of  the  health  of  its  scholars.  Nothing  receives 
larger  or  more  intelligent  attention.  The  sanitary  fa- 
cilities of  our  newer  school  buildings  seem  to  leave  ab- 
solutely nothing  to  be  desired.  The  care  taken  to  pre- 
vent contagion,  to  give  advice  and  aid  to  the  parents  and 


THE    SCHOOL  187 

to  children  by  the  school  physician  or  the  trained  nurse 
engaged  by  the  school  authorities;  the  co-operation  re- 
ceived at  the  hands  of  the  local  Boards  of  Health — all 
of  these  again  are  factors  which  enter  into  our  school 
life  and  work  to  its  decided  advantage. 

And  finally  I  may  call  attention  to  the  most  recent 
forms  of  help  which  the  school  derives  from  two  things 
introduced — one  within  its  walls  and  the  other  without. 
Too  high  commendation  of  the  school  city  and  of  the 
parents'  association  cannot  be  given.  The  former  is  an 
enormous  help  to  the  population  of  the  school,  not  only 
in  learning  to  assist  in  the  government  of  its  own  internal 
affairs,  but  also  in  laying  deep  the  foundations  of  citi- 
zenship. No  one  factor  will  contribute  so  largely  to  the 
making  of  good  and  intelligent  citizens  as  the  school  city. 

Think  of  the  advantages  boys  and  girls  thus  trained 
will  have  over  those  not  so  trained.  When  these  children 
grow  to  manhood  and  womanhood  the  sense  of  civic  re- 
sponsibility which  comes  with  adult  citizenship  will  not 
bear  about  it  the  stamp  of  novelty  which  it  does  to  those 
who  have  not  had  the  advantage  of  training  such  as  the 
school  city  gives.  The  child  which  has  been  mayor,  coun- 
cilman, policeman,  health  officer  or  some  other  form  of 
official  in  the  miniature  city  which  was  his  room  in  school 
is  very  much  more  competent  to  be  of  service  to  the  com- 
munity when  the  adult  days  come  of  which  such  service 
will  form  a  part  than  will  the  man  or  woman  whose  child- 
hood has  not  been  blessed  by  such  an  advantage. 

And  finally,  the  other  factor,  which  has  grown  up  out- 
side of  the  walls  of  the  school  yet  virtually  and  practi- 
cally a  part  of  it  and  of  its  system  of  work.  This  is  the 
"parents'  association."  It  is  largely  through  this  that 
the  responsibility  of  the  citizen  toward  the  school  can  be 
most  adequately  met.  For  it  naturally  forms  the  con- 


188  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

necting  link  between  the  home  and  the  school.  Although 
the  movement  is  still  in  its  incipiency,  it  commends  itself 
most  favorably  to  those  parents  who  are  anxious  that 
their  children  should  derive  the  utmost  advantage  from 
their  school  life,  and  few  parents  there  be  to  whom  this 
thought  is  devoid  of  interest  or  value.  If  these  associ- 
ations can  be  made  as  popular  and  as  powerful  for  good 
as  they  deserve  to  be  and  to  be  made,  they  will  afford  the 
most  intelligent,  direct  and  efficient  means  for  the  citizen 
to  discharge  his  obligation  toward  the  school.  They  will 
serve  as  an  easy  and  legitimate  channel  for  information ; 
they  will  serve  as  an  incentive  to  children  and  teachers ; 
they  will  facilitate  acquaintanceship  with  the  conditions 
of  the  school,  which  acquaintanceship  is  the  first  and  most 
important  obligation  of  the  citizen. 

The  thought  of  sending  a  little  one  to  school  and  then 
dropping  all  sense  of  obligation  toward  that  little  one 
or  the  school  he  is  in,  savors  too  much  of  antiquated  forms 
of  paternalism  to  need  comment  or  even  mention.  For 
it  is  a  foregone  conclusion  that  the  mother  who  sends  her 
child  to  school,  immediately  adds  that  school  to  her  house- 
hold obligations.  True  that  the  teacher  exercises  the 
privileges  of  maternity  in  her  place  for  the  hours  of  the 
child's  presence  in  school,  but  the  health  of  the  child  in 
school,  its  morals,  its  welfare  is  thereby  not  removed  from 
its  own  mother.  It  becomes  part  of  that  mother's  house- 
hold duties,  to  know  what  is  going  on  in  the  school,  and, 
either  alone  or  in  company  with  other  women,  through 
women's  clubs,  through  parents'  associations,  or  through 
her  husband,  to  keep  thoroughly  informed  as  to  what  is 
going  on  and  what  is  not  going  on. 

So  far  as  these  seven  points  are  concerned  the  attitude 
of  practical  citizenship  toward  them  is  affirmative  and 
lends  all  possible  support  to  them. 


THE    SCHOOL  189 


CHAPTER  XXI 

HOW  THE  SCHOOL,  SYSTEM  IS  ENFEEBLED  AND  WHAT  THE 
CONSCIENTIOUS  CITIZEN  SHOULD  DO  IN  THE  MATTEE. 

THERE  are  five  points,  so  far  as  my  studies  have 
hitherto  carried  me,  which  militate  against  the 
efficiency  of  our  school  system,  and  it  becomes 
an  obligation  of  practical  citizenship  to  consider  the 
means  whereby  these  deficiencies  shall  be  remedied. 

The  first  is  the  curriculum.  Our  school  is  a  connecting 
link  between  the  kindergarten  and  the  university.  It 
cannot  well  be  considered  by  itself.  For  we  must  grad- 
uate the  boys  and  girls  who  pass  through  our  schools 
into  one  or  the  other  of  the  colleges  waiting  for  them 
at  the  other  end  of  their  school  terms,  if  so  be  they  or 
their  parents  have  decided  upon  the  completion  of  their 
studies  in  one  of  these  institutions,  and  a  large  percent- 
age of  our  public  school  scholars  and  of  the  scholars  of 
our  private  and  parochial  schools  have  this  as  an  end. 
This  gives  us  our  first  difficulty  with  the  curriculum. 
For  we  have  three  distinct  grades  of  children  in  our 
schools:  First,  that  grade  which  is  studious  and  whose 
ultimate  end  is  the  college  and  all  it  stands  for ;  second, 
that  grade  which  will  not  go  to  college,  but  will  at  the 
first  opportunity  enter  business  life,  and  third,  that  grade 
which  brings  to  the  school  a  heavy,  dull  and  in  various 
ways  imperfect  mind,  and  for  which  the  school  must  serve 
as  a  kind  of  amender  of  deficiencies.  This  grade  after 
school  life  closes  (and  it  closes  for  these  children  at  the 
very  earliest  opportunity)  drifts  out  into  unskilled  labor. 


190  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

Thus  far  our  curricula  have  not  been  able  to  meet  this 
particular  series  of  grades.  One  reason  for  their  not  do- 
ing so  is  probably  because  those  who  framed  them  have 
hesitated  to  admit  to  themselves  the  presence  of  this  third 
or  lowest  grade.  Unfortunately  many  in  this  grade  are 
furnished  to  the  schools  from  defectives  taken  from  the 
ranks  of  foreigners  and  to  some  extent  of  our  colored 
population.  And  as  soon  as  an  effort  is  made  to  follow 
the  natural  lines  of  distinction,  a  hue  and  cry  is  raised 
on  national  or  color  lines,  and  the  matter  must  be  ad- 
justed as  best  it  can  or  dropped,  and  former  conditions 
reintroduced. 

There  seems  to  be  no  other  remedy  in  sight  than  the 
construction  of  a  threefold  curriculum,  or  of  a  curricu- 
lum of  threefold  application — one  grade  making  and 
meeting  the  highest  requirements  for  those  who  are  aim- 
ing at  a  college  education;  another  the  medium  require- 
ments of  those  who  are  going  out  into  the  ranks  of  skilled 
labor  and  business  professions,  and  an  easily  maintained 
lower  and  simpler  standard  for  those  who  seem  naturally 
to  tend  toward  the  ranks  of  unskilled  labor.  It  is  the 
height  of  absurdity  to  train  a  bright  young  Anglo- 
Saxon  mind,  which  is  preparing  for  Yale  or  Harvard  or 
Cornell,  along  the  same  lines  as  that  of  a  case  of  partially 
arrested  development,  which  drifts  into  the  school  simply 
because  of  the  inability  of  the  parent  to  furnish  the 
special  training  required  in  that  case.  The  only  remedy 
thus  far  discovered  is  the  preparatory  school,  which  is 
designed  to  stand  between  the  boy  and  the  girl  from  our 
high  schools  and  the  entrance  examination  for  college. 
And  this  is  a  fair  arrangement  for  those  only  who  can 
afford  it.  It  shuts  out  the  deserving  scholar  whose  par- 
ents are  not  able  to  afford  it,  and  who  is  for  this,  that  or 
the  other  reason,  disbarred  from  the  free  scholarship  de- 


THE    SCHOOL  191 

signed  to  meet  his  case.  I  have  reason  to  know  that  many 
bright  minds  lose  the  opportunity  at  the  kind  of  training 
which  would  be  most  acceptable  to  them  and  their  nat- 
ural guardians  for  the  reasons  above  given.  A  threefold 
curriculum  seems  to  be  the  only  remedy  for  this  undesir- 
able condition  thus  far  available,  and  where  it  has  been 
tried  it  has  met  with  unqualified  success. 

From  the  curriculum  we  naturally  come  to  two  other 
points  of  enfeeblement  of  our  school  system,  namely,  the 
labor  union  and  the  retarded  pupil.  It  is  rather  an  odd 
juxtaposition  of  things,  as  they  arrange  themselves  under 
the  eye  of  the  student,  and  yet  it  is  perfectly  intelligible. 
The  labor  union  comes  into  play  in  this  way.  It  follows, 
from  what  has  been  said  in  regard  to  the  curricula,  that 
many,  if  not  most,  of  our  boys  and  girls  go  from  school 
into  the  ranks  of  skilled  or  unskilled  labor.  And  here 
they  are  met  by  rules  and  regulations  which  labor  has 
thought  itself  compelled  to  adopt  for  self -protection.  It 
is  evident  that  the  attitude  of  the  labor  union  as  to  the 
kind  of  education  required  by  those  to  fill  its  ranks  must 
needs  have  a  large  and  either  a  useful  or  a  pernicious 
influence  upon  our  system  of  education  and  its  results. 

Take,  for  instance,  the  boy  who  has  made  good  use 
of  the  advantages  given  by  manual  training  in  the  school 
and  has  laid  a  fair  foundation  to  a  trade.  When  he  steps 
out  into  the  world  for  which  he  is  prepared,  that  world 
faces  him  by  certain  regulations  which  forbid  his  en- 
trance. He  is  not  wanted  in  the  trade  for  which  he  is 
prepared,  or  preparing.  Some  one  is  called  for  who  is 
not  as  well  prepared  as  he,  in  order  not  to  interfere  with 
the  workings  of  the  machinery  whereby  labor  has  hither- 
to thought  it  necessary  to  guard  itself.  This  condition 
has  not  yet  been  of  long  enough  standing  to  seriously  im- 
press the  boys  from  school,  but  its  militant  and  obstruc- 


192  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

tive  policy  is  beginning  to  be  felt,  and  that  policy  is  not 
favorable  to  the  best  results  from  our  school  system.  It 
is  to  be  hoped  that  labor  will  either  itself  find  a  better  so- 
lution for  this  phase  of  its  unfortunately  complex  prob- 
lem or  will  cease  to  put  into  the  lead  of  its  movements  men 
who  are  palpably  incompetent  to  frame  a  policy  which 
will  not  be  suicidal  to  the  interests  of  labor. 

And  alongside  of  the  retardation  involved  in  the  ani- 
mosity of  the  labor  union  to  the  best  results  of  the  school 
stands  the  other  feature  of  retardation,  which  has  been 
partly  involved  in  what  has  been  previously  set  forth 
on  this  subject — that  is,  whether  it  be  quite  fair  to  the 
bright  boy  or  girl  to  make  them  constantly  wait  for  the 
catching  up  of  that  incessant  stream  of  pupils  from  other 
shores  and  from  the  ranks  beyond  which  lies  the  moot 
problem  of  the  "color  line,"  which  stream  moves  slowly 
owing  to  its  large  admixture  of  minds,  which  would  nor- 
mally come  under  the  head  of  various  degrees  of  more  or 
less  marked  "arrested  mental  development."  Without  a 
careful  adjustment  of  these  unfortunate  combinations, 
the  school  cannot  do  its  best  work,  and  it  depends  upon 
the  intelligent  citizen  in  the  exercise  of  practical  citizen- 
ship to  make  an  effort  to  so  answer  this  involved  and  com- 
plex problem  as  to  make  his  answer  fair  to  the  labor 
union,  as  an  effort  on  the  part  of  labor  to  protect  itself, 
and  at  the  same  time  square  with  the  policy  of  the  Amer- 
ican nation,  that  the  colored  man  and  the  alien  and  their 
children  shall  have  the  same  rights  as  the  white  and  the 
native. 

And  finally,  briefly,  the  two  last  points.  One,  the  ques- 
tion of  morals,  and  the  other,  that  of  taking  the  school 
out  of  politics.  That  the  morals  of  scholars  require  keen 
surveillance  goes  without  saying.  Whether  our  present 
methods  of  oversight  are  the  best  that  can  be  devised  is 


THE    SCHOOL  193 

doubtful.  Events  transpire  constantly  from  the  outbreak 
of  more  or  less  serious  evidences  of  immorality,  in  the 
sense  of  the  involvement  of  the  sex  question,  to  the  larger 
outbreak  of  actual  burglary  committed  by  boys  moving 
in  "good  society"  in  order  to  get  at  the  answers  of  their 
exam,  questions,  thus  involving  the  ethic  side  of  morals ; 
which  events  lead  one  to  feel  that  the  vigilance  exercised 
over  the  moral  aspect  of  relationships  in  school  is  not  as 
close  and  as  thorough  as  is  to  be  desired.  There  is  room 
for  improvement  there. 

And  the  question  of  taking  the  school  out  of  politics 
— is  it  really  a  question?  Is  it  not  rather  the  statement 
of  an  absolute  necessity  ?  No  sane  man  can  possibly  en- 
tertain a  desire  for  a  moment  to  continue  the  system 
of  political  control  under  which  the  school  system  of 
many  States  is  suffering  in  its  local  aspects.  Deadlocks 
over  the  appointment  of  teachers  and  janitors;  incom- 
petency  of  political  "ward  heelers,"  who  fit  into  a  Board 
of  Education  to  which  they  are  elected  about  as  well  as 
would  a  smokestack  into  a  mandolin  case,  but  who  are 
nevertheless  placed  there  by  men  whose  conscience  has 
been  paralyzed ;  the  struggle  for  appointment  on  certain 
committees  which  are  supposed  to  make  "returns"  for 
political  services  rendered — all  these  and  many  other 
things  of  that  nature  are  entirely  out  of  place  in  the 
school  system.  It  should  be  taken  out  of  politics  at  the 
earliest  possible  date. 

In  what  way  this  is  to  be  efficiently  done,  whether  by  an 
elective  school  board  of  smaller  size,  say  nine  members, 
from  the  city  or  town  at  large ;  whether  by  an  appointive 
board  of  that  size;  whether  by  the  creation  of  govern- 
ment by  commission  and  by  the  placing  of  the  head  of 
the  school  board  on  that  commission;  in  whatever  way 


194  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

the  best  sense  of  citizenship  finally  decides  the  question, 
in  some  one  of  these  ways  should  the  school  be  taken  out 
of  politics.  It  should,  indeed,  be  one  of  the  chief  inter- 
ests of  practical  citizenship  to  see  to  its  early  removal 
from  the  baneful  pale  of  local  politics. 


HUMANITARIANISM  195 


CHAPTER  XXII 

OBLIGATIONS     TOWARD     THE     WORK     OF     HUMANITARIAN- 
ISM VOLUNTARY  AND  INVOLUNTARY  CONTRIBU- 
TIONS  LABOR  UNIONS  AND   CO-OPERATION. 

THE  municipality  may  be  considered  in  a  number 
of  ways.  It  has  an  economic  aspect,  in  that  it 
has  certain  available  assets,  such  as  streets, 
wharves,  parks,  markets,  and  so  forth. 

It  has  a  financial  aspect,  in  that  it  costs  such  and  such 
a  sum  to  run  it,  and  that  sum  must  be  provided  in  some 
way,  either  by  direct  or  indirect  taxation ;  by  provision, 
as  by  bonds  and  other  forms  of  indebtedness,  or  by  vol- 
untary contributions,  as  in  cases  of  calamity,  or  in  the 
work  of  charity,  for  the  most  part. 

The  municipality  may  also  be  regarded  from  an  edu- 
cational aspect,  and  inquiry  made  as  to  its  schools,  its 
churches,  its  lecture  courses,  its  art  galleries,  and  so  forth. 
Then  there  are  its  esthetic,  its  moral  and  many  other 
aspects. 

In  this  chapter  it  is  proposed  to  take  up  the  sense  of 
civic  obligation  from  the  aspect  of  the  voluntary  con- 
tribution— that  is,  from  the  side  of  the  humanitarian 
work.  It  is  evident  that  there  are  three  sources  from 
which  the  necessary  funds  for  the  running  of  a  city  may 
be  derived.  The  first  is  from  its  natural  assets.  This  has 
been  recklessly  neglected  in  most  cities  in  the  past,  and 
values  have  been  donated  to  private  individuals  and  cor- 
porations in  such  careless  and  munificent  ways  that  it 
seems  incredible  that  the  civic  conscience  awoke  to  this 


196  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

criminal  waste  only  at  as  late  a  day  as  it  did.  But  it  has 
awakened  to  it,  and  many  inquiries  are  going  on  as  to 
the  retention  of  the  communal  value  for  the  entire  body 
politic,  and  these  inquiries  will  doubtless  lead  to  tangi- 
ble and  satisfactory  results.  The  second  source  of  funds 
is  by  "involuntary  contribution,"  most  common  among 
which  are  direct  taxation  and  enforced  contribution, 
usually  of  a  political  nature.  The  third  is  that  of  volun- 
tary contribution.  The  last  has  usually  been  called  upon 
most  in  reference  to  that  section  of  human  society  which 
we  designate  our  "unfortunate  brother."  Some  section 
of  human  society  has  always  been,  and  probably  will  al- 
ways be,  in  this  category.  For  various  good  and  suffi- 
cient reasons,  and  from  various  more  or  less  clearly  un- 
derstood causes,  we  have  the  poor  always  with  us,  and  it 
grows  consciously  or  unconsciously  into  a  civic  obliga- 
tion for  those  who  are  more  fortunate  to  help  those  who 
are  less  so. 

This  obligation  can  be  met  by  the  individual  either  as 
an  individual  or  through  an  organization.  The  tendency 
of  the  age  is  toward  the  latter  method.  It  follows  the 
general  trend  of  evolution  in  this,  as  does  all  else.  Every 
other  effort  of  human  life,  from  capital  on  the  one  hand 
to  labor  on  the  other,  tends  toward  union  and  unification. 
So  it  is  with  charity  and  with  the  humanitarian  work  of 
our  municipalities.  It  is  growing  more  and  more  cor- 
porate. In  olden  days  it  was  quite  natural  that  it  should 
be  almost  entirely  individualistic ;  and  history  and  novels 
tell  us  ample  stories  of  how  wealth  in  olden  days  felt  and 
met  its  obligation  toward  poverty  in  altogether  individu- 
alistic ways.  The  lord  at  the  manor  gave  largess  to  those 
dependent  upon  him;  the  feudal  lord  fed  and  cared  for 
his  retainer  in  health  and  in  sickness ;  the  laird  fed  Jock. 
This  was  the  individualism  of  the  olden  days  and  it  per- 


HUMANITARIANISM  197 

sists  into  our  day  in  a  great  many  instances,  where  the 
wealthy  carry  forward  their  individual  charities  in  more 
or  less  modestly  concealed  ways,  and  where  the  good  wife 
of  the  house  thinks  of  "her  poor"  even  if  she  does  not 
speak  of  them. 

The  propriety  and  advisability  of  this  form  of  individ- 
ualistic giving  is  not  here  called  into  question.  It  is  only 
brought  to  the  attention  of  the  student  to  show  that  the 
tendency  of  the  age  is  the  other  way — that  is,  toward 
corporate  giving,  toward  the  regulation  of  charity  under 
bureaus  of  associated  charities  and  under  federations  of 
social  workers.  There  is  a  general  sense,  or  rather  aware- 
ness, that  this  is  the  better  way.  The  supervision  of  a 
Bureau  of  Charities,  which  devotes  its  entire  time  to  the 
work  of  investigating  the  worthiness  of  cases  and  to  the 
rational  alleviation  of  poverty  by  the  re-establishment  of 
manhood  and  manhood  possibilities,  is  a  valuable  substi- 
tute for  the  individualistic  care,  which  has  not  time  to  go 
into  detail  and  to  study  the  worth  of  a  case  before  it  con- 
tributes toward  the  alleviation  of  its  possible  distress ;  and 
the  possibilities  of  pauperization  by  the  individualistic 
method  are  so  much  greater  than  by  the  associate  method, 
that  the  latter  urgently  commends  itself  to  those  who  have 
looked  into  the  matter  at  all  seriously. 

To  this  general  trend  toward  the  associate  work,  there 
have  been  added,  and  may  be  added  several  features  which 
are  in  themselves  very  desirable,  and  which  have  in  sev- 
eral instances  passed  beyond  the  boundaries  of  the  merely 
suggestive.  Of  these  I  may  be  permitted  to  adduce  three. 
The  first  is  municipal  charity.  In  many  municipalities  it 
is  doubtless  the  case  that  the  persons  entrusted  with  the 
care  of  the  poor  in  its  manifold  forms,  as  poorhouses, 
homes  for  the  indigent,  pension  lists,  and  other  forms,  are 
altogether  competent  to  manage  affairs  to  the  advan- 


198  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

tage  of  the  city.  Thus,  in  a  nearby  community  those  who 
are  managing  the  poor-farm  for  the  city  have  realized 
that  the  value  of  the  property  has  been  enormously  en- 
hanced in  the  past  few  years,  owing  to  the  growth  of 
population  in  the  vicinity,  and  they  are  considering  the 
advisability  of  selling  the  farm  and  removing  to  some 
less  valuable  territory.  Items  of  this  kind  will  be  found 
in  many  cities.  But  in  some  cases  the  wisdom  of  those  in 
control  of  the  municipal  poor  would  be  enhanced,  if  it 
could  be  brought  in  contact  with  the  skilled  worker  in 
humanitarian  fields.  It  would  react  to  the  benefit  of  the 
town  and  to  the  advantage  of  the  individual  who  is 
helped,  if  the  methods  of  the  Bureau  of  Associated  Chari- 
ties could  be  adopted  for  municipal  wards,  rather  than  the 
spasmodic  helps  which  are  given.  It  is  to  be  much  de- 
sired, therefore,  that  the  conferences  between  charity  and 
social  workers  and  the  officials  of  our  poorhouses,  jails, 
reformatories  and  houses  of  detention  for  the  helpless 
wards  of  city,  county  and  State  should  be  not  only  con- 
tinued, as  they  are  in  New  Jersey,  but  made  as  much 
more  comprehensive  and  thorough  as  it  is  possible  to 
make  them.  For  the  sooner  city,  county  and  State  intro- 
duce the  methods  of  investigation  of  the  Bureau  of  As- 
sociated Charities  and  avail  themselves  of  the  work  al- 
ready done  by  such  organizations,  the  sooner  will  munici- 
pal, county  and  State  work  be  more  efficiently  done. 

The  second  is  the  work  of  associated  charity  in  its 
form  of  voluntary  organization.  Here  straws  show  in 
what  way  the  wind  of  further  co-operation  blows.  It  is 
a  distinct  pleasure  to  chronicle  the  ramifications  of  the 
work  in  specific  localities.  Here  is  an  instance  of  admir- 
able work  done  in  New  York.  Whoever  thought  of  this 
clever  method  of  fighting  the  great  white  plague  deserves 
more  than  honorable  mention  in  the  Hall  of  Fame.  Here 


HUMANITARIANISM  199 

is  the  reverse  side  of  a  transfer  given  out  on  a  Sunday  re- 
cently on  all  the  lines  of  New  York  City : 

"Consumption  in  Early  Stages  Can  Be  Cured. 

"Take  your  case  in  time  to  a  good  physician,  or  to  a 
dispensary  and  you  may  be  cured — Do  Not  Wait. 

"Consumption  is  'caught'  mainly  through  the  spit  of 
consumptives. 

"Friends  of  Consumption — Dampness,  Dirt,  Darkness, 
Drink. 

"Enemies  of  Consumption — Sun,  Air,  Good  Food, 
Cleanliness. 

"If  you  have  tuberculosis,  do  not  give  it  to  others  by 
spitting ;  even  if  you  have  not,  set  a  good  example  by  re- 
fraining from  a  habit  always  dirty  and  often  dangerous. 

"The  Committee  on  the  Prevention  of  Tuberculosis  of 
the  Charity  Organization  Society." 

The  ingenuity  which  conceived  the  thought  in  the  first 
place,  and  then  managed  the  play  on  alliteration  of  "D" 
in  "Dampness,  Dirt,  Darkness,  Drink,"  which  will  arrest 
attention  where  the  rest  might  not,  evinces  symptoms  of 
absolute  genius.  With  an  endless  series  of  facilities  thus 
employed  to  meet  the  ignorance  that  lies  back  of  disease, 
which  is  the  cause  of  almost  thirty  per  cent  of  all  pover- 
ty ;  to  investigate  the  worth  of  cases ;  to  push  the  work 
of  provident  savings  funds  and  other  means  of  thrift  and 
education  in  thrift,  the  aspect  of  the  problem  of  the  poor 
will  soon  show  a  favorable  change  and  a  marked  one. 

Reference  here  to  the  federation  of  giving  is  hardly 
necessary.  I  need  only  remind  the  reader  that  it  is  a 
proposition  to  combine  all  giving — that  is,  to  unite  all  the 
financial  sides  of  various  charitable  and  humanitarian  as- 
sociations into  one  fund,  toward  which  those  who  are  able 
may  contribute  all  they  feel  that  they  can  spare  for  char- 
ity in  any  one  year,  and  from  which  it  will  be  distributed 


200  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

to  the  various  organizations  pro  rata  and  according  to 
their  specific  and  provable  needs.  This  is  an  important 
advance,  since  it  will  obviate  the  repeated  calls  for  char- 
ity to  which  persons  of  means  are  supposed  to  respond 
during  the  year,  and  will  concentrate  effort. 

A  third  item,  which  may  prove  of  interest,  and  which 
naturally  embodies  a  suggestion,  came  to  the  mind  of 
the  writer  some  time  ago,  when  he  noticed  a  wagon  selling 
coal  by  the  bucket  in  a  town  where  this  method  had  not 
hitherto  been  common.  The  incident  awoke  all  the  dor- 
mant reminiscences  of  how  the  poor  pay  three  prices  for 
their  coal,  while  the  rich  pay  only  one  price,  because  of 
their  larger  opportunity.  The  house  before  which  the 
wagon  stopped  was  that  of  a  laboring  man,  temporarily 
out  of  work.  This  suggested  the  question  whether  the 
union  to  which  this  laborer  belongs  had  considered  "co- 
operation" at  all.  In  England,  where  this  whole  labor 
problem  has  been  thoroughly  thrashed  out,  and  definite 
results  have  been  obtained,  one  of  the  first  steps,  after  the 
formation  of  the  union,  and  the  various  struggles  to  which 
that  gave  rise,  was  the  introduction  of  co-operation.  And 
the  thought  clung  rather  tenaciously,  because  it  seems 
such  a  distressing  instance  of  things  out  of  plum  and  out 
of  perspective,  when  the  poor  man  is  made  to  pay  higher 
for  coal  and  other  necessities  than  the  rich  man,  when  the 
latter  can  more  readily  afford  the  higher  price.  And  it 
clung  more  tenaciously,  because  of  the  fact  that  there  are 
two  sidings  on  the  local  railroad  available  to  the  labor 
union,  if  it  should  decide  that  it  is  a  proper  use  of  its 
contributed  funds  to  buy  coal  by  the  carload  and  distri- 
bute it  to  its  members  at  a  low  figure,  and  at  such  times 
when  the  savings  in  the  provident  fund  seem  to  make  it 
advisable. 

It  seemed  as  legitimate  a  use  for  those  funds  as  any  to 


HUMANITARIANISM  201 

which  they  are  now  put.  In  some  ways  it  seemed  rather 
a  better  use  than  some  others.  And  the  mind  extended 
the  suggestion  to  other  staples  and  necessities,  such  as 
flour,  sugar,  potatoes,  and  began  to  ponder  the  feasi- 
bility of  the  labor  and  trades  unions  considering  the  ques- 
tion of  co-operation  at  an  early  day. 


202  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

IMPORTANCE    OF   A    HIGH    MORAL    TONE   IN   A    COMMUNITY 
AND  WHY  IT  SHOULD  BE  MAINTAINED. 

IN  this  work  the  term  "moral"  has  always  been  used 
in  the  wider  sense  which  attaches  to  its  original  de- 
rivation from  its  Latin  root.  The  word  is  here  used 
as  though  it  were  derived  from  the  root  "moror"  "to  re- 
main behind,  to  linger,  to  tarry,"  and  is  referred  to  those 
lasting  elements  of  human  experience  which  go  to  make 
up  the  sum  total  of  our  inheritance  from  past  ages,  the 
body  of  things  found  to  have  been  wise,  good  and  effi- 
cient for  the  maintenance  of  human  society  in  its  most 
desirable  form,  and  which  have,  therefore,  "remained  be- 
hind" while  others  perished. 

And  the  term  "moral"  differs  from  "ethical,"  "religi- 
ous" and  similar  and  synonymous  terms  in  that  it  refers 
to  a  body  of  truth  gathered  from  life  experiences.  Hence 
it  is  here  used  in  a  sense  wider  than  that  which  confines  it 
to  the  question  of  sex,  to  which  it  is  usually  restricted. 
A  thing  is  moral  or  immoral,  not  because  it  refers  to  the 
relation  of  men  and  women  to  one  another,  but  because  it 
agrees  with  or  violates  that  large  body  of  experience 
which  the  race  has  gathered  and  gained  and  realized  as 
good  and  efficient  for  the  retention  of  society  in  "good 
form."  We  therefore  use  this  latter  expression  in  some- 
what the  same  sense  and  we  speak  of  a  thing  as  being  in 
"good  form"  because  it  has  been  found  to  secure  prompt 
movement  of  the  mass  with  little  or  no  friction. 

In  this  sense  any  violation  of  order  is  immoral.    It  is 


MORAL    TONE  203 

moral  to  live  according  to  the  Ten  Commandments ;  it  is 
immoral  to  live  in  contravention  to  them.  It  is  moral  to 
live  within  one's  means ;  it  is  immoral  to  live  beyond  them. 
It  is  moral  to  use  means  of  advertisement  properly ;  it  is 
immoral  to  use  the  billboards  of  a  town  for  the  display 
of  incongruous  indecency  under  the  guise  of  melodrama 
or  burlesque.  It  is  moral  to  be  respectable ;  it  is  immoral 
not  to  be.  It  is  moral  to  print  a  good  newspaper ;  it  is 
immoral  to  give  it  a  yellow  tint.  The  list  is  long,  but 
these  few  items,  gathered  as  far  apart  as  feasible,  will 
serve  to  convey  the  idea  that  we  use  the  word  in  its  widest 
and  most  comprehensive  sense. 

If  now  the  word  "tone"  be  added,  the  reference  of 
practical  citizenship  to  "moral  tone"  will  instantly  ap- 
pear. Every  aggregate  of  men  has  a  certain  moral  tone. 
That  tone  may  be  low  or  it  may  be  high.  The  question 
which  it  is  to  be  for  the  welfare  of  that  aggregate  is  not 
difficult  of  solution.  It  is  to  be  high.  Any  lowering  of 
moral  tone  is  impractical;  it  is  unwise;  it  is  harmful. 
Somewhat  in  the  same  way  as  the  physician  tries  to  keep 
up  the  "tone"  of  his  patient's  system,  will  the  good  citizen 
try  to  keep  up  the  moral  tone  of  his  community ;  and  for 
the  same  reason,  if  you  ask  the  physician  why  he  pre- 
scribes a  "tonic,"  he  will  say,  because  it  is  necessary  to 
maintain  the  "tone"  of  the  system,  in  order  that  it  may 
be  able  to  resist  the  encroachment  of  disease ;  in  order  that 
it  may  make  the  patient  able  to  fight  for  the  restoration 
of  his  health. 

In  fact,  he  will  say,  if  the  tone  of  the  system  had  been 
kept  up,  the  patient  would  not  have  been  a  patient.  He 
would  have  resisted  the  "cold,"  the  "grip,"  the  "nervous 
exhaustion,"  the  "malarial  germ,"  or  whatever  it  was 
that  found  him  lacking  in  resistance. 

For  exactly  the  same  reason  does  the  good  citizen  try 


204  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

to  maintain  the  "moral  tone"  of  his  community.  He  does 
so  because  the  lowering  of  the  moral  tone  exposes  the 
community  to  social  diseases  in  the  same  way  as  the  lower- 
ing of  the  physical  tone  exposes  the  body  of  the  individ- 
ual to  diseases.  It  will  be  remembered  that  we  have  per- 
sistently maintained  the  correspondence  between  the  body 
individual  and  the  body  politic,  and  the  emphasis  here 
placed  upon  the  two  tonalities  referred  to — "moral  tone" 
and  "physical  tone" — is  a  reversion  to  the  original  prin- 
ciples enunciated  in  earlier  chapters. 

Good  behavior  has,  therefore,  a  side  which  is  not  always 
recognized  and  which  has  failed  of  recognition  hitherto, 
largely  because  our  moralities  were  hitherto  based  upon 
the  egotistic  view  of  society,  while  we  are  now  trying  to 
base  them  upon  the  altruistic  view.  Thus,  for  instance, 
in  the  older  dispensations  of  the  church,  we  looked  upon 
salvation  as  individual  salvation;  good  behavior  insured 
to  the  person  concerned  his  own  salvation.  Little  else  was 
emphasized.  In  the  new  dispensation,  while  the  former 
concept  is  infringed  upon  in  no  way,  there  is  added  the 
idea  that  only  that  man  can  go  to  heaven  deservedly  who 
brings  a  friend  with  him.  He  cannot  go  alone.  He  must 
bring  others  with  him.  His  life  and  that  of  his  neighbor 
are  so  intimately  interrelated  that  the  sense  of  being  alone 
is  relegated  to  that  time  when  Deity  first  announced  that 
"it  is  not  good  for  man  to  be  alone,"  and  there  was  a  help- 
meet created  for  him.  So  to-day,  in  civic  work,  we  are 
emphasizing  the  "social  fabric,"  and  we  are  endeavoring 
to  do  so  in  most  rational  ways.  For  is  it  not  perfectly 
clear  that  the  lowering  of  the  moral  tone  of  a  community 
exposes  that  community  to  disease,  as  the  lowering  of 
physical  tone  exposes  the  individual  body  to  disease? 

Take  a  class  of  children  in  school.  It  can  readily 
serve  as  an  illustration,  because  of  concreteness  and  com- 


MORAL    TONE  205 

pactness.  The  teacher  maintains  a  "moral  tone"  in  that 
class  and  the  boys  and  girls  are  asked  to  behave  in  cer- 
tain dignified  and  orderly  ways.  Why?  Because  of  the 
individual  boy  or  girl?  Only  in  part.  It  is  almost  en- 
tirely because  of  the  class  as  a  class.  There  are  certain 
liberties  which  could  be  granted  to  those  who  are  nat-> 
urally,  or  by  disposition  or  by  home  training  inclined 
to  be  well  behaved  and  orderly.  But  they  are  not 
granted,  because  there  are  certain  others  in  the  class 
whose  moral  tone  is  naturally  low,  and  who  would  drag 
the  class  down  with  them.  It  would  not  be  useful  work 
for  the  teacher  to  admit  as  a  standard  of  morality  the 
standard  entertained  by  the  mischievous,  the  disorderly, 
the  filthy-minded  pupil  or  pupils. 

The  chaos,  the  disorder,  the  sense  of  mental  unclean- 
ness  which  would  soon  follow  such  a  lowering  of  stand- 
ards would  react  in  unenviable  ways  and  would  destroy 
the  work  of  the  school.  The  purpose  for  which  the 
school  was  created  and  built  would  be  frustrated  and 
made  void.  The  mental  fiber  of  the  boys  and  girls  would 
be  undermined,  and  the  citizens  produced  would  be  open 
to  and  liable  to  all  the  various  forms  of  social  disease, 
which  grow  in  the  soil  of  disorder,  mental  uncleanliness, 
laxity  of  discipline,  lack  of  co-ordination  in  thought  and 
absence  of  self-control.  Hence,  though  we  live  in  a  land 
which  is  democratic  in  its  government  and  republican  in 
its  institution,  and  "proclaims  liberty  throughout  all 
the  world,"  yet  we  restrain  that  form  of  liberty  in 
schools,  which  bears  too  close  a  resemblance  to  the  broth- 
er of  the  mob — license. 

When  this  principle,  which  is  fundamental  to  the 
enjoyment  of  liberty  by  the  mass,  is  applied  to  the  lar- 
ger aggregate  of  a  city,  a  town,  a  municipality,  we  find 
that  in  that  aggregate  there  must  also  be  maintained 


206  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

order,  and  for  the  same  reason.  Relaxation  of  the  ele- 
ments of  law  and  order  means  encroachment  of  social 
disease.  Hence,  though  we  are  a  liberty  loving  people, 
we  must  restrain  license,  or  we  destroy  liberty. 

And  the  attitude  of  practical  citizenship  on  that  ques- 
tion is  one  that  needs  scarcely  any  elaboration.  Every 
citizen  is  called  upon  to  be  orderly  and  to  make  a  decided 
and  continuous  effort  to  maintain  the  moral  tone  of  his 
community — to  assume  an  attitude  of  fair  and  open- 
minded  kindliness  toward  every  form  of  literature, 
amusement,  theatre,  newspaper,  which  the  varied  needs 
of  the  citizens  in  the  community  may  crave  and  thence 
create.  But  there  should  be  a  line  of  standards,  beyond 
which  he  will  not  allow  things  to  proceed  without  deci- 
ded protest  on  his  part,  if  needs  be,  enforced  by  appeal 
to  the  law  and  the  police. 

The  good  citizen,  who  in  every  instance  is  the  practi- 
cal citizen,  has  decided  views  upon  what  is  good  litera- 
ture in  his  newspaper.  He  can  tell  a  clean  and  carefully 
edited  paper  from  any  shade  of  reportorial  hysteria. 
He  realizes  and  appreciates  how  much  of  the  undesira- 
ble, the  morbid,  the  unnatural  and  the  unclean  the  vigi- 
lant blue  pencil  keeps  out  of  his  mental  food.  And  he 
supports  that  paper  which  stands  for  the  moral  tone 
of  the  community.  He  knows  the  value  of  a  clean 
stage.  He  knows  the  tremendous  influence  of  the  melo- 
drama upon  the  more  or  less  excitable  side  of  the  com- 
munity. He  realizes  fully  the  danger  to  which  the  gen- 
eral public  is  exposed  from  any  lowering  of  the  stand- 
ards of  the  stage.  The  mental  atmosphere  men  breathe 
can  be  and  is  vitiated  as  readily  as  the  physical  air  they 
live  in,  and  the  mental  degeneracy  that  follows  the  one 
resembles  in  every  way  the  physical  degeneracy  that  fol- 
lows the  other. 


MORAL    TONE  207 

The  good  citizen  will  follow  the  amusements  of  the 
people  and  their  trend,  and  will  lend  his  support  to  those 
which  are  healthy  and  will  deny  it  to  those  which  are 
unhealthy,  because  immoral.  He  will  note  the  outbreaks 
of  profanity,  of  indecency,  of  ambiguity,  which  seem  to 
come  to  the  sane  mind  in  its  aggregate  form  about  in 
the  same  way  as  they  come  to  the  insane  mind  in  its  in- 
dividual form. 

The  literary  efforts  of  children  turned  loose  from 
school,  with  a  bit  of  chalk,  the  manifestations  of  indeli- 
cacy on  billboards  and  in  shop  windows,  where  theatre 
posters  are  displayed;  the  taking  apart  of  human  anat- 
omy in  patent-medicine  advertisements  in  the  public 
press  and  manifold  other  forms  of  the  lowering  of  moral, 
tone  he  resents,  because  he  has  a  right  to  his  own  mental 
cleanliness,  and  a  larger  right  to  it,  than  his  neighbor 
has  to  his  mental  uncleanliness,  simply  because  the  un- 
cleanness  of  that  neighbor's  mind,  like  the  uncleanness 
of  his  body,  breeds  mental  vermin  and  disease,  and  the 
good  citizen  and  his  children  are  exposed  to  it.  And  he 
may  call  upon  the  clergy  and  such  agencies  as  are  es- 
tablished for  the  maintenance  of  mental  sanitation  to 
keep  the  mental  atmosphere  clean,  with  the  same  rights 
and  prerogatives  wherewith  he  may  call  upon  a  board 
of  health  to  keep  the  physical  atmosphere  and  the  water 
courses  of  the  city  clean. 

And  to  the  vigorous  protest  against  having  his  moral 
tone  lowered  by  a  lower  standard,  begotten  either  in  this 
country  or  another,  he  adds  the  positive  work  in  social 
settlements,  in  boys'  clubs,  in  neighborhood  houses,  in 
civics  clubs,  which  tends  toward  the  uplift  of  morals. 
This  he  does  not  because  of  his  own  individual,  personal 
welfare,  since  we  have  passed  the  threshold  of  altruism, 
but  for  the  welfare  of  his  municipality,  realizing  that 


208  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

a  lowering  of  moral  tone  involves  the  more  or  less  rapid 
decay  of  society,  the  reversal  to  more  or  less  pronounced 
forms  of  barbarism  and  the  encroachment  upon  the 
rights,  privileges  and  privacy  of  good  citizenship  on  the 
part  of  that  which  is  unclean  and  which  requires  control 
because  it  lacks  self-control. 

And  it  grows  more  and  more  into  a  conviction  with 
him,  that  even  in  a  republican  country  there  must  be  re- 
straint; there  must  be  conservation  of  order,  of  decency, 
of  law,  since  upon  such  conservation  depends  the  liberty 
of  the  largest  number. 


IDEALS  209 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

PROBLEMS  OF  THE  NATION   DEPEND   FOR  THEIR   SOLUTION 

UPON  THE  MAINTENANCE  AND  REALIZATION   OF 

IDEALS. 

AND  now  we  take  up  the  final  words  in  a  task 
which  has  been  a  pleasure  and  which  we  sincerely 
hope  has  been  of  service  to  those  who  have  ex- 
tended to  these  chapters  the  courtesy  of  perusal. 

We  advance  to  the  borderline  between  nature  and 
spirit  and  gaze  forth  into  the  realm  of  ideals.  Nor  is 
this  an  inappropriate  time  for  such  contemplation.  For 
the  serious  problems  which  face  the  American  Nation,  as 
a  nation,  depend  for  their  solution  upon  the  maintenance 
and  the  realization  of  ideals.  It  is  the  bringing  down 
of  ideals  to  the  plane  of  actuality. 

Every  reader  of  the  Bible  knows,  that  it  conveys  the 
teaching  that  the  realm  of  ideals  shall  be  brought  down 
into  the  world  of  actualities.  It  teaches  it  in  general 
ways ;  it  emphasizes  it  in  specific  ways.  Throughout  all 
the  wonderful  Shemitic  imagery  of  the  Old  Testament; 
throughout  the  ennobling  grandeur  of  the  Psalms; 
throughout  the  calm  dignity  of  the  teachings  of  Jesus ; 
throughout  the  marvelous  metaphor  of  the  Prophets  and 
the  Apocalypse  of  John,  the  Divine,  there  runs  this  scar- 
let thread  of  idealism  to  be  made  actual ;  of  the  ideal  that 
seeks  to  be  and  needs  to  be  real.  And  all  along  the  edge 
of  things,  along  the  fringe  of  that  peculiar  tissue  of 
marvels,  wherewith  God  talks  to  his  children  in  the  Won- 
derbook,  there  runs  that  "ribband  of  blue"  which  dem- 


210  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

onstrates  and  clamors  for  the  Divine  Truthfulness  of  the 
statements  made,  of  the  conditions  described,  of  the  pic- 
tures limned  upon  the  background  of  history  with  a  skill 
clearly  Divine. 

But  more  than  that.  The  Divine  Author  introduces 
several  narratives  which  show  His  intent  clearly,  as 
clearly  as  they  demonstrate  their  own  divine  origin.  They 
impress  the  reader  at  first  with  a  sense  of  the  marvelous, 
which  is  quite  normal  and  not  at  all  unusual.  For  the 
things  described  are  deeply  recondite,  even  if  the  inter- 
pretation which  is  sometimes  given  for  the  transactions 
is  calculated  to  set  aside  what  might  otherwise  have  to 
be  considered  miraculous  and  so  challenge  contradiction 
on  the  part  of  the  reasoning  mind.  And,  therefore,  af- 
ter the  first  impression  of  awed  mystery  wears  away, 
there  is  left  the  sober  conviction,  that  these  remarkable 
stories  are  the  only  efficient  means  of  telling  a  series  of 
equally  remarkable  facts,  which  under  other  word-garb 
would  not  be  fully  set  forth. 

The  reader  may  recall  that  in  an  earlier  chapter  I 
called  his  attention  to  the  remarkable  story  of  Joshua 
battling  in  the  valley,  while  Moses  sits  upon  the  rock 
with  uplifted  hands.  It  will  be  remembered  that  so  long 
as  the  hands  of  Moses  were  uplifted  so  long  did  Joshua 
succeed  in  the  valley  and  so  long  did  he  overcome  his 
enemies.  And  if  the  hands  of  Moses  sank,  then  did 
Joshua  fail  of  conquest.  Evidently,  if  it  were  desired 
to  write  the  story  of  how  our  actual  successes  in  the 
humbler  walks  of  life  depended  upon  the  uplift  of  our 
ideals,  no  arrangements  of  thought-pictures  could  com- 
pare in  excellence  with  this.  Hence,  the  conclusion  is 
entirely  permissible,  that,  apart  from  whatever  of  his- 
toric value  the  incident  may  have,  it  admirably  expresses 
the  thought,  that  the  maintenance  of  ideals  is  essential 


IDEALS  211 

to  ultimate  success  in  the  "valley  of  the  shadow  of  death" 
as  the  natural  realm  of  life  is  poetically  called  in  the 
sacred  Scriptures. 

Nor  is  it  difficult  to  find  proof  of  this.  From  the  earli- 
est days  to  the  present  those  men  have  been  successful  in 
the  realm  of  actuality  and  of  real  things,  who  have  main- 
tained the  ideals  which  they  saw  before  them.  The  con- 
cept, which  makes  such  men  as  Froebel,  Washington  and 
Lincoln,  possible  is  an  ideal  concept.  They  hold  firmly 
to  the  ideals  which  they  have  set  before  them  and  their 
success  in  the  field  which  they  have  chosen  for  themselves, 
or,  rather,  which  Providence  has  chosen  for  them,  de- 
pends entirely  upon  the  uplift  of  the  hands  of  Moses,  the 
ideal  of  the  law;  for  whether  we  read  "Moses  and  the 
prophets"  or  "the  law  and  prophets"  in  our  Book,  it  is 
the  same  thing.  It  is  this  concept  of  the  idealization  of 
the  law,  this  uplift  of  it  to  its  highest  pinnacles,  which 
is,  and  ever  must  be,  the  final  achievement  of  practical 
citizenship. 

But  there  is  another  picture  of  infinite  value  to  him 
who  tries  to  fathom  the  mysteries  of  being  either  of  the 
individual  or  of  the  aggregate.  It  is  the  weirdly  out- 
lined picture  of  the  building  of  the  "Tabernacle."  We 
all  remember  the  charms  and  fascination,  wherewith  this 
picture  nestled  away  in  our  child  heart  in  those  days 
when  God  was  not  a  dream  or  a  theological  question  and 
the  life  of  the  world  not  an  enigma  or  a  "Riddle  of  the 
Universe,"  but  merely  an  accepted  fact,  held  by  the  sub- 
lime faith  of  childhood,  to  which  we  shall  presently  reat- 
tain,  if  there  be  any  truth  in  the  law,  propositionally 
stated  by  the  Divine  Mercy  that  anointed  the  lips  of 
Jesus,  when  He  said :  "Unless  ye  become  as  little  children 
ye  shall  not  inherit  the  kingdom  of  heaven."  In  those 
dim  days,  when  God  was  building  your  soul  and  mine  and 


212  PRACTICAL  CITIZENSHIP 

drawing  it  tenderly  into  the  innermost  recesses  of  the 
subconscious  mind,  to  keep  it  safe  against  the  day  when 
we  would  grow  into  sufficiently  adult  manhood  to  be  en- 
trusted with  the  further  development  of  it  and  asked  to 
share  in  the  responsibility  of  that  further  development; 
in  those  days  we  listened  with  breathless  interest  to  the 
story  of  the  building  of  that  soul. 

We  took  it  for  granted  that  God  would  call  it  a  "Tab- 
ernacle" and  a  "Temple."  Why  should  we  not?  The 
child  knows  what  the  man  doubts  and  disbelieves.  It 
seemed  the  height  of  naturalness  that  God  should  lift  the 
law  to  the  mountaintop,  that  He  should  take  Moses  up 
to  the  highest  pinnacles  of  thought  and  love  attainable 
and  should  there  show  him  the  thing  called  character  and 
call  it  the  "pattern  of  the  tent  which  was  shown  thee  in 
the  Mount."  How  natural  it  all  was ;  how  divinely  logi- 
cal. And  then  that  He  should  tell  Moses  to  go  down  into 
the  wilderness,  the  "howling  wilderness  of  everyday  life," 
and  reproduce  there  the  ideal  which  had  been  shown  him. 
The  boards  and  their  sockets,  the  curtains  and  hangings, 
the  sevenfold  lampstand,  the  source  of  mental  light,  the 
twelvefold  table  of  the  "bread  of  faces,"  that  food  of 
the  soul;  and  the  altar  of  incense,  that  incense  which  is 
"the  prayer  of  saints." 

It  was  all  perfectly  logical,  because  our  child  mind,  be- 
ing nearer  the  sources  and  springs  of  life  than  we  could 
ever  be  again,  realized  that  that  was  just  what  it  was  set- 
ting forth  to  do.  In  those  dream-days  of  boyhood  and 
youth,  when  we  thought  out  our  ideals,  when  we  walked 
and  watched  and  prayed  upon  the  high  pinnacles  of  ut- 
ter loyalty,  of  true  friendship,  of  disinterested  love,  of 
ambitions,  that  were  based  upon  our  desire  to  be  of  use 
to  humankind — in  those  days  we  were  looking  rapt  and 
intent  upon  the  patterns  of  that  manhood  and  woman- 


IDEALS  213 

hood  which  we  intended  to  build  in  our  hearts  and  life, 
when  we  stepped  out  into  the  egotistic  glare  of  the  sun 
of  the  desert  of  life  and  took  up  the  burden  and  heat  of 
the  day.  And  again,  if  any  one  were  to  desire  to  write 
the  story  of  this  intention,  of  this  longing  to  bring  to 
ultimate  and  legitimate  fruition  these  ideals  which  people 
the  higher  regions  of  the  mind  and  of  the  soul,  what  more 
fitting  story  could  he  indict  than  this  wonderful,  quiet, 
simple  tale  of  how  the  tabernacle  is  shown  in  the  moun- 
taintop  and  reproduced  in  the  valley? 

Hence  again  the  assumption  is  a  perfectly  proper  one, 
that  the  story,  apart  from  whatever  its  historic  values 
may  be,  was  so  told  as  to  convey  this  higher  spiritual 
lesson.  Hence  again  the  ultimate  standard  of  practical 
citizenship  is  not  only  the  maintenance  of  ideals  in  the 
higher  reaches  of  mind  and  soul,  but  the  bringing  down 
of  those  ideals  to  be  made  actual  in  the  world  of  outer 
things,  in  the  busy  humdrum  world  of  men  and  women, 
in  the  gray  fog  of  the  valley,  of  ignoble  and  unfinished 
things,  which  presses  inward  upon  the  consciousness  of 
our  better  self  and  enshrouds  and  sometimes  endeavors 
to  suffocate  it. 

And  in  the  vast  realm  of  ideals  which  lies  just  beyond 
the  curtain  wherewith  Divine  Mercy  veils  our  future  from 
us,  there  lie  ideals  which  are  of  eternal  application.  For 
there  we  see  looming  large  above  all  others,  those  which 
have  about  them  the  stamp  of  the  eternal  and  spiritual 
since  they  tower  far  above  the  domains  of  time  and  space. 
Liberty,  Equality,  Fraternity;  these  ideals,  dreamed  of 
by  France  in  the  days  when  she  was  writing  history  in 
blood  and  materialized  by  America,  when  she  cast  the 
statue  of  George  into  bullets,  seem  to  be  inwoven  into 
the  background  of  the  fabric  of  the  great  republic  of 
which  we  are  privileged  to  write  ourselves  citizens.  And 


214  PRACTICAL   CITIZENSHIP 

below  them,  resting  like  the  finger  of  dawn  upon  the  hill- 
tops of  ambition,  are  those  glorious  institutions,  where- 
by the  citizens  of  the  great  republic  attain  their  high 
purposes,  namely,  the  public  school,  the  Sabbath,  sancti- 
fied by  our  ancestors,  and  the  nobility  of  womanhood, 
which  is  as  peculiar  to  America  as  are  the  other  two 
ideals.  And  yet  below,  touching  the  ridges  of  towering 
crags  of  the  mental  world,  as  the  faint  green  of  mosses 
that  cling  to  them,  are  those  ideals  of  rectitude  and  civic 
virtue  for  which  we  strive,  when  we  try  to  make  the 
ballot  sacred,  the  right  of  citizenship  valuable  and  the 
voice  of  the  people  the  voice  of  God. 

And  as  we  bring  these  ideals  down  toward  the  mists  of 
the  valley,  those  mists  writhe,  hover,  wreathe  and  part, 
and  we  have  displaced  many  of  them  and  given  more  or 
less  tangible  shape  to  many  of  those  things  which  in  the 
days  when  Dickens  wrote  "Oliver  Twist"  and  "Little 
Dorrit"  were  ideals  as  yet  unborn  upon  earth.  And  the 
mists  that  have  wreathed  upward  and  have  died  away  in 
the  light  of  the  rising  sun  of  American  citizenship  are 
those  which  we  called  slavery,  lottery  and  other  evils  of 
which  we  have  cleared  our  civic  atmosphere,  and  we  are 
wrestling  bravely  with  others,  as  wrestled  Jacob  with  the 
angel.  We  shall  attain  them,  not  perfectly  (for  Jacob 
limped  when  he  had  wrestled  all  through  the  night  with 
the  celestial  presence)  ;  yet  could  not  that  Presence  with- 
hold his  blessing,  and  he  called  the  name  of  that  place 
"Peniel"— the  "face  of  God."  So  we  are  wrestling  still 
with  political  corruption,  with  child  labor,  with  drink, 
with  the  gambler,  who  makes  insecure  the  foundations  of 
trade  by  reason  of  his  senseless  passion  and  greed,  with 
Mormonism,  with  the  corporation  and  with  many  other 
shadows  of  the  valley.  But  within  the  bosom  of  practical 
citizenship  lie  dormant  the  powers  which  will  lift  up  the 


IDEALS  215 

hands  of  Moses  and  cause  Joshua  to  prevail  In  his  strug- 
gle in  the  valley,  and  which  will  enable  the  strength  of 
American  citizenship  to  ascend  the  mountain  top,  face 
there  the  awful  Presence  of  Unseen  and  Unfathomed 
Deity,  and  there  be  shown  the  pattern  of  the  tabernacle 
which  it  is  to  build  in  the  arid  reaches  of  the  desert  of 
Egotism,  of  self-aggrandizement,  of  greed  and  the  pas- 
sion for  that  which  belongs  to  others. 

And  we,  American  citizens,  will  continue  the  work. 
Plank  after  plank,  curtain  after  curtain,  rope  after 
rope,  socket  after  socket,  will  we  continue  to  mold  the 
mystic  forms  of  that  tabernacle  until  it  is  all  upreared 
and  the  glory  of  the  Holy  One  shall  cover  it  and  fill  it 
and  hover  above  it  a  cloud  by  day  and  a  pillar  of  fire  by 
night. 


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